I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



- ,51 



Shelf 



UNITED STATES OF AMERiCA. jg 






s8£ 

BvBffflwSfiS 


wpSmPf 


'■>■;:/, 8| 


HHBRR 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM 



The Bible and The Koran 



FOUR LECTURES 



BY THE 



REV. W. R. W. STEPHENS 

PREBENDARY OF CHICHESTER \ AUTHOR OF * THE LIFE OF S. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM 
MEMORIALS OF THE SOUTH 6AXON 5EE * ETC. 



NEW YORK 

SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO, 

1877. 



,5 8 



1/ 



GRANT, FAIRES & RODGERS, 
ELECTROTYPERS AND PRINTERS, 
PHILADELPHIA, 



PREFACE. 



The following Lectures were in substance 
delivered during Advent, last year, in the 
Cathedral Church of Chichester. They have 
been prepared, with some alterations and 
additions, for publication, in compliance with 
the wish of some who heard them, and in the 
hope that they may prove a contribution, how- 
ever humble, to an intelligent appreciation 
of the great subject with which they deal. 
The annual delivery of a set of lectures in 
the Cathedral is one of the conditions on 
which my Prebendal Stall has been held since 
its foundation in the thirteenth century, and 



A* 



VI PREFACE. 

I selected Christianity and Islam for my sub- 
ject last autumn, believing the consideration 
of such a subject to be especially salutary 
and opportune at the present time. If the 
Eastern Question has its roots to a large 
extent in religious differences between Mus- 
sulmans and Christians, it behooves us all, 
and more particularly the theological stu- 
dent, to ascertain as exactly as possible what 
those differences really are; how far they 
are deep and vital, how far superficial and 
incidental, what practical difficulties they 
place in the way of Christian and Mussulman 
living together on terms of amity; how far, 
and in what way, these difficulties may be 
surmounted. 

To the great prophet of Arabia, and to 
the marvellous work which he accomplished, 
I have endeavoured to do justice, in oppo- 
sition to the false and calumnious estimate 
which in a past age condemned Mahomet 



PREFACE. Vll 

himself as a kind of malicious fiend, and his 
religion as a diabolical invention. On the 
other hand, I have sought to show that 
Christianity and Islam are radically diverse 
in the nature of their origin, in the character 
of their sacred books, and in their practical 
effects upon mankind ; that the difference 
between them is one not of degree, but of 
kind, according to the wise saying of Dr. 
Arnold, that while other religions showed 
us 'man seeking after God/ Christianity 
showed us 'God seeking after man;' a maxim 
which students of the crude science of com- 
parative religion are too apt to forget. I 
have endeavoured, lastly, to point out that if 
there be these real and vital distinctions be- 
tween the two religions, it is worse than folly 
to try and ignore them; that while there 
ought to be, and might be, peace and good- 
will between the believers in rival creeds, it 
should not be placed on a rotten foundation; 



Vlll PREFACE. 

the rotten foundation which would be laid by 
those who see imaginary resemblances, and 
are blind to real distinctions; for if indiscri- 
minate antagonism is mischievous, indiscri- 
minate concession is mischievous also, and 
can only lead to confusion and disaster. 

I subjoin a list of tlie principal authorities 
which I have consulted :— 

The Koran, translated by Sale, with introduction 
and notes. 

Gibbon, i Decline and Fall,' ch. 1., li., liii.; written in 
his most brilliant and masterly style, only too 
much coloured by the sarcasms in which he 
indulges in the treatment of any religious sub- 
ject. 

Milman, i Latin Christianity/ Book IV. ch. i. 

Dr. White, 'Bampton Lectures;' fairly represents 
the narrow estimate of Mahomet prevalent in 
the last century. 

Sir W. Muir, 'Life of Mahomet ' (four vols.); 
learned and impartial, as well as reverent and 
Christian in tone. 

Weil, 'Mohammed der Prophet;' full and learned, 
and more readable than 



PREFACE. IX 

Sprenger, 'Life of Mohammed ;' which is equally, 
if not more learned, but less impartial and 
more theorizing — 'more Germanico.' 

Bosworth Smith, 'Mohammed and Mohammedan- 
ism;' able and ingenious, but the partiality of 
the author for Mohammedanism seriously de- 
tracts from the accuracy and value of the work. 

J. H. Newman, Lectures on the Turks, in ' Histori- 
cal Sketches/ 

E. A. Freeman, 'Lectures on the History and Con- 
quest of the Saracens.' 

G. Finlay, ' History of Greece under Foreign Do- 
mination,' vol. i. (2nd edition); a most invalua- 
ble work. 

W. G. Palgrave, 'Central and Eastern Arabia.' 

Sedillot, 'Histoire G6n6rale des Arabes' (2d edi- 
tion) ; this did not come into my hands soon 
enough to be of much use to me, but it seems 
full of most interesting matter, put together in 
a very pleasant way. 

Articles in the ' Christian Remembrancer,' for June 
1855 ; in the ' North British Review,' for August 
1855; in the 'British Quarterly,' for January 
1872; in the 'Quarterly,' for January 1877, but 
this last was too late to be of any service to me. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 

PAGE 

The Origin of Christianity and of Mohammed- 
anism. Sketch of the Life and Character 
of Mahomet i 



LECTURE II. 

The Theological Teaching of the Bible and 

that of the Koran Contrasted . . 52 



LECTURE III. 

Moral Teaching of the Bible and the Koran 
Contrasted ... 91 



LECTURE IV. 

The Practical Results of Christianity and 

Islam . . . . . .127 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 



LECTURE I. 



THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY AND OF MOHAMMEDANISM. 
SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF MAHOMET. 



Some said " He is a good man :" others said, " Nay, but he deceiveth 
|. the people." 



It will be my endeavour in this set of lectures 
to gather up the principal points of contrast 
between Christianity and Islam, the Bible and 
the Koran ; between the religion founded by 
Jesus Christ and the religion founded by Ma- 
homet — between the book which contains, as 
the Christian believes, the word of God; and 
the book which contains, as the Mussulman 
no less believes, the words of God conveyed 
through the mouth of His prophet. 

I use the word contrast advisedly, in pre- 
ference to the word comparison. The differ- 
ence between the two terms is this : To con- 

B 



2 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

trast is to place two things, which have some 
resemblances to each other, side by side, in 
order to detect the points of unlikeness. To 
compare, on the other hand, is to place two 
things, which present some dissimilarity, side 
by side, in order to find out the points of 
likeness. If two things are exactly alike, 
there is, strictly speaking, no comparison be- 
tween them ; they are practically identical. 
If, again, two things are utterly and totally 
unlike, they cannot fairly be contrasted. It 
is possible, for instance, and may be instruc- 
tive, to contrast a man with an ape, because 
amidst many differences there are some re- 
semblances between the two animals. But 
to contrast a man with a fish, or still more 
with some inanimate object, would be an idle 
task, because where nearly all is difference, 
there are no points to contrast. 

The advantage, then, of contrasting is to 
bring out (where this is desirable) into pro- 
minent relief the differences between two ob- 
jects which in some respects are similar. And 
I think that an investigation, by this method, 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 3 

of the vital differences between Christianity 
and Islam is not unprofitable in the present 
day. Up to at least the beginning of this 
century the character of Mahomet and of the 
work which he accomplished was unfairly 
depreciated, In the pages of Prideaux, of 
Dr. White, and to some extent even of Gib- 
bon, he is represented as a consciously de- 
signing and artful impostor, who pretended 
to be the recipient of divine revelations merely 
in order to facilitate his schemes of personal 
ambition. This view of Mahomet's character 
has now been abandoned as untenable by 
all sound critics. But in the eagerness of a 
better informed and more enlightened age to 
redress the balance, the danger is that it 
may be overweighed in the opposite scale. 
The character of the great prophet of Arabia 
and of his religion will now no longer be 
underrated; the fear is lest by many they 
should be painted in colors too attractive. 

It is difficult to doubt that other motives 
also, besides the praiseworthy desire of re- 
pairing past injustice, operate in the same 



4 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

direction. This is not the time to minutely 
examine the causes which alienate many in 
the present day from the Christian faith. 
With some it may be the bewilderment of 
the understanding through the manifold diffi- 
culties supposed to be experienced in recon 3 
ciling the discoveries of science or criticism 
with Holy Scripture ; with others it may be 
that hardening of the .spirit against the re- 
ception of spiritual doctrine, which is one 
natural consequence of spending life in the 
midst of material luxury; with others it may 
be the aversion of a selfish and impure heart 
from submission to the severe moral standard 
of 'the Gospel : with others it may be that 
tendency (natural in an age which has made 
great advances in knowledge) to indepen- 
dence and conceit, which is inclined to dispute 
the excellence or truth of most things which 
our forefathers believed and venerated ; with 
others it may be a mixture of some, or all, 
of these causes. A fact, however, it remains, 
that many, in proportion to their disposition 
to doubt or reject the Gospel of Christ, seem 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 5 

disposed to regard with some favour, even if 
they do not actually embrace divers forms of 
philosophy or religion ; a favour which to the 
careful and impartial student seems greatly 
in excess of the intrinsic merits of those 
systems. . Simple Materialism, Pantheism, 
Positivism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, even 
the gross and (one would have thought) 
palpable imposture of spirit-rapping, have 
found their advocates and patrons among 
men who fancy they discover insuperable 
difficulties in accepting the faith of Christ as 
it was once delivered to the saints. 

Now, of all the systems here alluded to, 
Mohammedanism no doubt presents the near- 
est parallel to Christianity, both in its origin 
and progress. Its beginnings are not lost in 
the mists of a remote and fabulous antiquity. 
It was founded, like Christianity, by one per- 
son : this person was at first rejected by his 
own people; gradually he gathered round him 
a small band of disciples; out of this germ 
the faith was propagated which in time won 
Arabia from idolatry, Persia from Magi- 



6 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

anism, and wrested some of the fairest pro- 
vinces from Christendom itself. The sacred 
book, the Koran, might, in sublimity of 
language, and, to some extent, even in the 
purity of its teaching, theological and practi- 
cal, bear comparison with the sacred writings 
of Jews and Christians. Finally, the religion 
thus established has lasted for some 1,250 
years, and at the present time maintains its 
sway over 1 20 millions or more of the human 
race. It is the only other religion besides 
Christianity which inspires its votaries with 
much proselytising zeal; and in missionary 
success in some parts of the world, it sur- 
passes its rival. It makes fresh advances 
every year in Africa, Australia, and the inte- 
rior of India which exceed the progress of 
Christianity in those countries. 

Such are a few of the salient points of 
resemblance between Christianity and Islam. 
But my aim, as was remarked at the outset, 
is not to compare but to contrast ; to disco- 
ver the differences which underlie the resem- 
blances, and to estimate their importance. 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 7 

Let us begin, then, with the origin of the 
two religions, and consider the circumstances 
under which each was founded, and the cha- 
racter of the respective founders. 

It was an observation of Machiavelli that 
no man could make himself a prince and found 
a kingdom without opportunities. What 
were the opportunities of Mahomet? To 
begin with, what was the state of the world 
when Mahomet appeared ? He was born in 
the year 570 a.d. The civilised world at 
that epoch was divided between the two 
great rival empires of Rome and Persia. 
Almost incessant warfare was going on be- 
tween them, and their boundaries were con- 
stantly fluctuating. Arabia, being on the 
confines of the rival powers, was subjugated, 
so far as the fierce independent spirit of the 
inhabitants permitted it to be subjugated at 
all, to each in turn. The religion of the 
Roman Empire was Christianity ; but Christi- 
anity on the eastern frontier was distracted 
and corrupted by a variety of conflicting 
heresies, which disguised its essential charac- 



8 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

ter, and exhausted its vital energy. As the 
extremities of the human body are the most 
quickly chilled, owing to their distance from 
the heart, as the fringe of a garment is the 
part most liable to be torn and stained, owing 
to its friction with other substances, so the 
pulse of national Roman life beat but feebly 
in the eastern extremities; the eastern fringes 
of the empire were constantly torn by dissen- 
sion from the established religion, by revolt 
against the political government. The asso- 
ciations of their old nationality were too strong 
for them. Neither the religion, nor the laws, 
nor customs of the Roman Empire had ob- 
tained a firm hold upon them. They were 
ecclesiastically addicted to heresy — politically 
addicted to rebellion. 

The religion of Persia, whatever it may 
originally have been, had turned to dualism, 
or the worship of two co-ordinate powers — 
the spirit of good or light, Ormuzd; the spirit 
of evil or darkness, Ahriman. But the Sun 
being venerated as a symbol of the power of 
light, a superstitious worship of fire and of 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 9 

the heavenly bodies had practically super- 
seded, to a great extent, the purer and more 
philosophic creed. 

As the Arabs were alternately subject 
politically to their two powerful neighbours, 
so did they catch some sparks, of the religious 
spirit prevalent in each. Christianity and 
Magianisra each had their votaries in 
Arabia, and colonies of Jews had settled 
there more than 600 years before the birth of 
Mahomet. But the dominant creed of the 
Arabs was a kind of degenerate Monotheism ; 
the corrupt offspring of the purer faith of 
their forefather Ishmael. They believed in 
one Supreme Deity, but subordinate to Him 
was a host of inferior divine personages who 
were supplicated as intercessors. This 
mixed, mongrel religion had its national home 
and centre in the sacred temple, the Kaaba, 
in the sacred city of Mecca. Here was the 
holy black stone, the relic of an earlier temple 
built by Abraham and Ishmael, a relic, also, 
as was believed, of Paradise, where it was 
originally given to Adam. Once it had been 



IO CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

white, but had changed its hue either from 
contact with sinful lips, or from the repeated 
kisses of the faithful. There was the print of 
Abraham's footstep ; there was the holy 
spring, Zemzem, which had burst forth to 
save Hagar and Ishmael from perishing by 
thirst. Thither the devout Arab came to 
worship the God of Abraham, but also to 
implore the succour of the 360 intercessory 
powers whose images were ranged within 
those sacred walls. Round those holy walls 
he walked seven times, naked, to signify the 
putting away of his sins. Seven times did 
he run to and fro between Mounts Safa and 
Merwa, to typify Hagar seeking water for 
her child ; seven times did he throw stones 
into the valley of Mina, in memory of the 
stones which Abraham flung at the Devil, 
when disturbed by him in the act of offering 
up Ishmael ; for in Arabian tradition it is 
Ishmael, not Isaac, who occupies the fore- 
most place. 

But, shortly before the rise of Mahomet, 
a spirit of profound dissatisfaction with the 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. I I 

national religion had begun to work among 
the more reflective and discerning of his 
countrymen. In the introduction to one of 
the most ancient biographies of Mahomet 
there is a chapter inscribed 'an account of 
four men who without revelation perceived 
the error of idolatry/ This is the substance 
of it. One day the Koreishites, the tribe 
which was the guardian of the Kaaba, were 
celebrating a solemn feast in honour of one 
of the lesser deities. They bowed the knee 
before the image, walked round it, and offered 
sacrifices with customary reverence. But 
four men secretly held aloof from these acts 
of devotion, and opened their hearts one to 
another. ' Verily/ said one, ' our tribe does 
not know the true religion. They have 
corrupted the faith of Abraham ; they wor- 
ship a stone and walk round about it, though 
it neither sees nor hears, and can neither do 
them good nor harm. Friends, let us seek 
the truth for ourselves, for verily we are not 
in the right path/ So they parted and went 
hither and thither in quest of the pure faith 



12 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

of Abraham. Of the four inquirers, two it is 
said became Christians ; a third after the 
preaching of Mahomet embraced Islam, but 
ultimately he too, on going to Abyssinia, was 
converted to Christianity, and when he met 
any disciples of the prophet he was accusj 
tomed to say: i We see, and you attempt to 
see/ The fourth, Zayd by name, renounced 
and condemned all the gross superstitions of 
his countrymen, more especially the custom 
of sacrificing before images, and the horrible 
practice of female infanticide ; but he remained 
in a sceptical condition of mind, ever longing, 
but never able, to come to the knowledge of 
the truth. There is a pathetic story of him 
in his old age : how he was seen leaning with 
his back against the wall of the Kaaba, and 
he cried aloud : ' O, ye Koreishites ! by Him 
in whose hands my soul is, none of you 
follow the religion of Abraham/ And he 
continued: 'O Lord, if I knew which form 
of worship is most acceptable to Thee, I 
would adopt it; but I do not know it/ 
Thus he spake, resting his forehead on the 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 3 

palms of his hands. He traveled through 
Mosul, Mesopotamia, and Syria, seeking re- 
pose for his troubled, anxious spirit. In the 
midst of his wanderings he heard of the 
growing fame of Mahomet. He started for 
Mecca, but was murdered on the way. 

I have related this narrative, not as con- 
sidering it in all its details deserving of 
much credence, but because its very ex- 
istence, whether true or not, is a proof and 
illustration of a spirit of dissatisfaction and 
doubt prevalent at the time to which it refers. 

To form any just estimate of the prophet 
of Arabia and of his work, it was necessary 
to indicate the conditions, political, social, and 
religious, of his country. 

To sum up, then, Arabia was on the 
edge of two great rival empires, both weak- 
ened by protracted and exhausting contests. 
The crisis of the struggle, indeed, was con- 
temporaneous with the preaching of Ma- 
homet. Heraclius the Roman Emperor 
overthrew the Persian power in 629. The 
Roman Empire was itself weakened in the 



14 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

border provinces by this exertion ; the Per- 
sian Empire never recovered. The Arabs 
had been partially subject to one or other 
power, but never absorbed politically or reli- 
giously by either. 

Gross superstition and licentiousness pre- 
vailed, but a spirit of discontent and skepti- 
cism was at work. There was no national 
unity. Each tribe was a separate independ- 
ent atom. 

The opportunity, then, was favorable for 
the action of some master mind which should 
first of all weld the jarring elements of life 
in Arabia itself into a compact body ; then 
proceed to annex to it the great neighboring 
Empire of Persia, already prostrate by its 
rival ; and finally to subdue the weakened 
fringes of that very rival, the Roman Empire. 

And this was the work of Mahomet. By 
bringing men to believe in himself as a 
divinely inspired prophet, he established a 
theocracy wherever that belief was accepted; 
he united his followers under a political and 
religious system all in one, for the Koran was 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 5 

to them alike their code of civil law and 
their oracle of theological truth. 

Having now examined the nature of the 
field in which the prophet of Arabia planted 
his creed, we will turn for a few minutes to 
the contemplation of the .man himself, from 
the soil to the sower and to the manner in 
which the seed were sown. 

The sketch must of necessity be com- 
pressed, but I will try not to omit any inci- 
dents of real importance. 

Who, then, was Mahomet ? Mahomet, the 
son of Abdallah, and the grandson of Abd-al- 
Muttallib, belonged to the tribe of the Koreish, 
the guardians of the Kaaba, and to the 
family of Hashem, the most honourable 
family within that tribe. 

His father died a short time before his 
birth. His mother was of a nervous and 
superstitious temperament. She fancied that 
about the time of the child's birth she was 
surrounded by an extraordinary halo of light ; 
and it may have been partly owing to this 
circumstance that he was named by his 



1 6 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

grandfather, Mohammed, or "the Renowned/' 
This meaning of the word should be remem- 
bered, since it was afterwards turned, as will 
be seen, to curious account. For the sake of 
convenience, I follow the more usual Euro- 
pean form of the name, and write it Mahomet 
The birth took place at Mecca, on or 
about August 20, 570 a.d. The child was 
nursed according to Meccan custom, not by 
his mother, but by a Bedouin woman, and 
was reared by her in the desert. When four 
years old, he had the first of those epileptic 
fits to which he was liable during all the 
earlier half of his life. Such fits were re- 
garded with superstitious awe by the Arabs, 
as the supposed effects of diabolical pos- 
session ; and, on the recurrence of an attack 
when he was five years old, the Bedouin 
nurse took the young Mahomet back to his 
mother, and could not be persuaded to re- 
sume her charge. His mother died when he 
was six, and his grandfather when he was 
eight; but he was carefully and kindly brought 
up by his uncle, Abu Talib, for the duties of 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 7 

a kinsman were scrupulously observed among 
the Arabs. When he was twelve years old, 
he accompanied his uncle on a caravan jour- 
ney to Syria. The story that near Bostra, 
he made the acquaintance of a Christian 
monk, tarried with him, and returned under 
his charge to Mecca, may be true ; but it 
occurs in the midst of such strange tales of 
incredible wonders that it cannot be accepted 
as a certain fact. How much of Mahomet's 
acquaintance with the Gospel history may 
have been due to this connection, supposing 
such to have been formed, it is easy to sur- 
mise, but impossible in the absence of infor- 
mation to determine. Much more may 
probably have been learned at the great 
annual fair held at Ocatz, three days 1 journey 
from Mecca, during the sacred month before 
the pilgrimage to the Kaaba, Here a mixed 
concourse of Arabs, Christian and Jewish, 
as well as Pagan, assembled, partly for trade, 
partly for amusement, partly to engage in 
poetical and martial contests for prizes. 
Here, according to tradition, Mahomet heard 



1 8 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

Coss, Bishop of Najran, preach on the great 
facts and doctrines of the Gospel. Here his 
poetical imagination and patriotic spirit may 
have been stimulated ; here he may have first 
conceived the ideal of a religion which should 
combine truths extracted from many diverse 
sources. 

Time went on, and Mahomet became 
entitled to the enjoyment of a small patri- 
mony, consisting of a house, five camels, 
a flock of sheep, and a slave. He showed 
little aptitude for practical business, but was 
fond of the quiet and innocent occupation of 
tending sheep, in which he was afterwards 
wont to compare his early life with the lives 
of Moses and of David. When twenty-five 
years old, however, he was entrusted, through 
his uncle's recommendation, with the conduct 
of a caravan to Damascus, the property of 
the wealthy widow Khadijah. He discharged 
his errand to the complete satisfaction of his 
employer, who rewarded him with her hand 
in marriage. She was fifteen years older 
than her husband; but he remained thoroughly 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 9 

faithful to her, and did not wed another till 
after her death. 

For fifteen years after his marriage — that 
is, up to the age of forty — Mahomet wor- 
shipped the gods of his fathers, but he 
became increasingly meditative, restless, de- 
jected. He was courteous in company, but 
spoke little, and with downcast eyes. Gra- 
dually he withdrew altogether from worldly 
business, save such pastoral occupation as 
milking the goats, or tending the sheep. 
He spent much time in fasting and prayer in 
his favourite retreat, a cave on the bare and 
rugged side of Mount Hira, occasionally 
even being absent from home all night. 

His mind became agitated by doubts 
respecting the truth of the religion of his 
forefathers. His seasons of seclusion were 
more frequent, more prolonged. He re- 
nounced the customs which savoured of 
idolatry. 

There are several short chapters in the 
Koran which probably belong to this period. 
They read like the expression of an earnest, 



20 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

anxious, inquiring spirit, which has grasped 
some truths, and is searching for more. The 
vanity of worldly ambition ; the sin of covet- 
ousness and slander ; the inseparable con- 
nection between happiness and virtue, misery 
and vice ; the error of supposing that ad- 
versity is always a sign of God's displeasure, 
or prosperity of His favour ; the duty of pro- 
viding for the fatherless, and of almsgiving ; 
the certainty of future rewards and punish- 
ments, according to each man's deeds— these 
are doctrines insisted upon with the earnest- 
ness of profound conviction, mingled with 
prayers for further enlightenment and guid- 
ance. 1 

He was wrought to a high pitch of mental 
tension, and felt constrained to preach, but he 
had no commission ; he could not point to any 
credentials to enforce the authority of his mes- 
sages. By some, indeed, he was respected as a 
poet or a genius ; but by others he was scorned 
and derided as a soothsayer, a madman, a fool. 
He began himself to doubt what he was, a 

1 Suras 103, 100, 99, and i. 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 21 

prophet or a Kahin, inspired by God or by 
an evil spirit. His wife, his cousin Waraca, 
and a few other intimate friends believed in 
his divine inspiration. Such pure conceptions 
of the Deity, and such a lofty standard of 
moral teaching and moral conduct, could not, 
they thought, be the offspring of diabolical 
influence. When he was yet in the agony 
of suspense and depression, sometimes even 
meditating self-destruction, light pierced the 
clouds. As he was wandering among the soli- 
tudes of Mount Hira, he beheld within two 
bows' length the dazzling figure of the 
angel Gabriel, and listened with rapture to 
the memorable command: 'Cry, cry aloud 
in the name of the Lord ; the most merciful 
God who hath taught the use of the pen to 
record revelation.' l Mahomet hastened home, 
solaced and encouraged by the assurance 
that the long-desired commission from on 
high had come ; but for some period, of 
which the length is uncertain, it was unheeded 
by all. At last, as he lay one day on the 

* l Sura, 96. 



22 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

ground, recovering from one of his fits, and 
wrapped up in a mantle, he again heard the 
voice of the heavenly messenger uttering the 
words: O thou that art covered with a 
mantle arise, and preach and magnify the 
Lord, and depart from all uncleanness.' * 

This is the real starting point of Islam. 
From this date Mahomet's confidence in him- 
self as the accredited messenger of God never 
wavers, and all the utterances of the Koran 
are introduced by the words 'speak/ or 'say/ 
to intimate that they were put into the mouth 
of the prophet by his Divine Master. The 
people, indeed, still demanded some visible 
evidence of his authority. Let him cause a 
spring of water to gush forth, or a grove of 
palms to rise in the desert, or let him ascend 
to heaven and bring down a book, and they 
would believe him. But these skeptical 
taunts no longer harassed the prophet's 
mind. H e could proudly and calmly reply that 
he was but a man, not empowered to work 
miracles, but that the divine beauty of his 

1 Sura, 74. 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 2$ 

message was its own evidence. It came 
from God; and, if men did not listen to it, 
destruction would as surely overtake them 
as it overtook the cities in the plain. 

The work of conversion, however, was 
slow in its progress. In the course of three 
years Mahomet had gained about forty 
disciples, consisting chiefly of his own rela- 
tions, friends, and dependents. As in the 
early days of Christianity, so in the early 
days also of Islam, many converts were 
obtained from the slave class. The slaves in 
Arabia were most susceptible of conversion, 
not only from their position, but also because, 
being for the most part foreigners, many of 
them had received a tincture in early life of 
Jewish or Christian teaching, which rendered 
them at least averse from idolatrous super- 
stitions. But, as Mahomet's influence in- 
creased, jealousy and alarm began to be 
awakened in the tribe of the Koreish. They 
were the guardians of the sacred temple, and 
this heretical son was beginning to shake the 
fidelity of his countrymen to the ancestral 



24 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

faith, of which that temple was the visible 
shrine. Some of Mahomet's followers had 
retired for prayer one day to a valley near 
Mecca, when a party of unbelieving neigh- 
bours unexpectedly passed by. Taunts and 
retorts led to blows. Saad, one of Maho- 
met's party, struck an opponent with a camel 
goad ; and this, it was commonly said, was 
the first blood shed in Islam. 

Meanwhile Mahomet waxed bolder. He 
took up his abode in the house of a convert, 
named Arcam, hard by the Kaaba, and there 
he preached, especially at the time of pil- 
grimage, to all who would resort to him, and 
seldom without some success. The house 
of Arcam was the cradle of Islam, as the 
* Upper Chamber ' in Jerusalem was the 
cradle of Christianity. The burden of 
Mahomet's message was the same to all : 
the absolute unity of God ; the authority of 
His prophet; the moral duties of prayer, alms- 
giving, and fasting ; the certainty of a future 
state of happiness or woe. The hostility of 
the Koreish grew more fierce. They seized 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 25 

the converted slaves, and tried to force them 
to recantation by imprisonment, or exposure 
to the scorching mid-day sun, and without 
food, or drink upon the gravel of the Meccan 
valley. Many yielded under repeated appli- 
cation of this torture, but there were others 
whose constancy was inflexible. No words 
could be wrung from the slave Bilal in his 
agony, but ' Ahad! Ahad! one, one only God/ 
Mahomet himself was secure under the 
protection of his uncle Abu Talib. Abu 
Talib was not a believer in his nephew's 
mission, but the sacred duty of the kinsman 
prevailed over all other considerations. ' Be- 
ware of killing him/ he said to the leaders 
of the hostile movement ; * if ye do, verily I 
shall slay the chiefest among you in his 
stead/ 

For his disciples Mahomet devised a safer 
means of escape from persecution and possi- 
ble perversion. By his advice a small party 
of them sought an asylum in the Christian 
kingdom of Abyssinia, and their hospitable 
reception encouraged a larger body to fol- 

D 



2 6 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

low their example the year after. This Hegira, 
or flight to Abyssinia, stands in relation 
to Islam as the flight of our infant Saviour 
into Egypt stands to Christianity. It saved 
the new religion from being crushed in 
its infancy ; and the success of the plan 
possibly suggested the great Hegira, or mi- 
gration to Medina some years later. The 
departure of his converts, however, oppressed 
Mahomet with a sense of loneliness and iso- 
lation, under which his spirits and faith seem 
for a short time to have given way. Amidst 
some conflict of evidence something like an 
inclination to make terms with his opponents 
seems discoverable. He appears to have 
uttered words which sounded at least like a 
concession of some intercessory power to the 
subordinate deities. But the lapse was of short 
duration; he was probably soon refreshed 
by good tidings from Abyssinia (like St. Paul, 
in his loneliness at Corinth, by the good news 
which Timothy brought from Thessalonica), 
and the tone of the Koran waxes louder and 
sterner than ever, in its denunciation of 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 2 J 

idolatrous worship. 'Why,' it is scornfully 
asked, ' implore help from images which have 
no power to move even the husk of a date- 
stone ?' 

The malignity, however, of the Koreish 
increased in proportion. They tried again 
to induce Abu Talib to abandon his nephew. 
The uncle remonstrated with Mahomet for 
his obstinate persistence in heresy. ' If they 
brought the sun to my right hand and the 
moon to my left/ replied the nephew, 'to 
force me from my undertaking, I would not 
desist from it until the Lord made manifest 
my cause, or I perished in the attempt/ 
But, while inflexible in his purpose, the 
thought of desertion by his kind protector 
overcame his feelings, and he burst into tears. 
The heart of Abu Talib also melted. 'Come 
back/ he said, ' son of my brother/ as Ma- 
homet had turned to depart; 'go in peace, 
and say whatsoever thou wilt, for by the 
Lord I will not in any wise give thee up for 
ever/ 

The Koreish were now thoroughly alarmed, 



2 8 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

and, to complete their discomfiture, two new 
converts were won by Mahomet — Hamza and 
Omar ; men of high position, ability, and in- 
fluence. Omar had formerly been among his 
bitterest adversaries. As a last resource the 
Koreish placed the whole family of Hashem 
under a ban. The solemn deed of excom- 
munication was hung up in the Kaaba. The 
Hashemites were assigned an isolated quarter 
in the suburbs, and all intercourse with 
them was strictly forbidden. They managed, 
indeed, to get provisions in by stealth, but 
were often reduced to great straits for food. 
The spirit, however, of Mahomet faltered not. 
At the season of the pilgrimage to the Kaaba, 
he would boldly enter the precincts and 
preach, promising temporal dominion and 
future paradise to all who would become his 
disciples. But his day was not come, and the 
people jeered. 

The blockade lasted three years (616-619 
a d.). At length some of Mahomet's friends 
heard that the parchment on which the deed 
of excommunication was written had been 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 29 

almost devoured by insects. An examina- 
tion of the document proved the truth of the 
report. It was represented to the Koreish 
as a divine judgment cancelling their unbro- 
therly act. Some of the Koreish relented, 
and five of their chief men let the Hashemites 
out of durance, and made themselves respon- 
sible for their safety. Fresh troubles, how- 
ever, were in store for Mahomet. His wise 
and loving wife Khadijah died, and very 
soon afterwards his faithful protector, his 
uncle Abu Talib. Another uncle, also an 
unbeliever, but with a feebler sense of the 
duties of a kinsman, promised him protection ; 
but it did not last long, and the situation of 
Mahomet was again critical. 

But new light began to dawn from Medina. 
Powerful Jewish tribes dwelt there, and in their 
contentions with Arab neighbours they were 
wont to say: 'A great prophet shall one day 
rise among- us; him shall we follow, and then 
we shall overcome you/ Some pilgrims from 
Medina were attracted by the preaching of 
Mahomet at Mecca. They said among them- 

D* 



30 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

selves : 'This surely is the prophet with whom 
the Jews threaten us ; let us then be the first 
to follow him.' 1 They declared to Mahomet 
their conviction of the truth of his claims: they 
promised to enlist their fellow tribesmen in 
his cause, and to report progress to Mahomet 
at the next pilgrimage. 

A year of anxiety and suspense wore 
away, and in the spring of 621 A. D. the 
pilgrims came again. At an appointed spot, 
the secluded glen of Akaba near Mina, 
Mahomet sought his friends, and to his re- 
lief was greeted by twelve men, disciples, 
who plighted their faith to him in the simple 
formula: 'We will not worship any but the 
one God : we will not steal, nor commit adul- 
tery, nor kill our young children ; neither 
will we slander in any wise, and we will not 
disobey the prophet in anything that is right/ 
The pilgrims departed, and Mahomet re- 
turned to Mecca. He still patiently waited 



* The dramatic details of this account by Ibn Ishac may not 
be trustworthy, but they forcibly illustrate feelings which most 
probably were realities. 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 3 1 

his opportunity for decisive action ; but the 
Koran begins to take a wider scope, a sterner, 
a more defiant tone. The contest between 
Heraclius and Persia was coming to a crisis ; 
the Koran confidently predicts the triumph 
of the Roman Emperor. 1 Vengeance is de- 
clared as imminent to those who will not 
believe ; 2 a dearth at Mecca is interpreted 
as a judgment on unbelief, and a call to re- 
pentance. Solemn imprecations are invoked 
by the prophet on himself if the Koran be not 
a true revelation. 3 

And now another pilgrimage came round, 
622 a.d., another meeting in the lonely glen. 
It was an hour before midnight when Maho- 
met waited there in a flutter of hope. Pre- 
sently by twos and threes his converts might 
be seen stealing from behind the dark rocks 
into the moonlight, until Mahomet beheld a 
muster of seventy-three devoted believers in 
his mission. They spoke in low tones for 
fear of spies. ' Stretch out thy hand, O Ma- 

1 Sura 30. * Sura 21. 

3 Suras 23, 69. 



32 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

hornet/ said Bara, the aged chief of the party ; 
and he stretched it out, and Bara struck his 
own upon it, as the manner was when one 
took an oath of fidelity to another, and all the 
rest did the like. Mahomet chose out twelve 
of the chief men, saying : ' Moses chose twelve 
leaders from among his people. Ye shall be 
sureties for the rest as were the Apostles of 
Jesus, and I will be surety for my own people.' 
And all answered, ' So be it/ Thus was rati- 
fied the second pledge of Akaba. 

And now Mahomet felt that the hour was 
come. The memorable command was issued 
to his disciples in Mecca : ' Depart unto Me- 
dina, for the Lord hath given you brethren 
and a home in that city/ Gradually the 
believers stole away. The Koreish were 
startled day by day to see house after house 
deserted. In about two months none re- 
mained in Mecca except the prophet himself, 
his faithful friend Abu Bakr, and his nephew 
Ali. Abu Bakr urged flight, but Mahomet 
delayed: 'the command/ he said, 'had not 
yet come from the Lord/ Abu Bakr, how- 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 33 

ever, was determined to be ready when it did 
come. Two swift camels were bought, and 
kept tied and highly fed in the yard of his 
house. A private hoard of money was con- 
cealed about his person. The Koreish mean- 
while were known to be plotting mischief, 
and at last Mahomet declared that the deci- 
sive hour had arrived. He and Abu Bakr 
stole away by night, and took refuge in a 
cave on Mount Thaur, a few miles to the 
south of Mecca, in order to delude their pur- 
suers, Medina being 250 miles to the north. 
As they were crouching in the cave, Abu 
Bakr looking up saw light through a crack 
in the rock. 'What if the enemy were to 
spy us out!' he exclaimed; 'we are but two.' 
'There is a third/ replied the dauntless pro- 
phet, ' God Himself/ 

A goat-herd in the employ of Abu Bakr 
brought them supplies of milk, and on the 
third day they were informed that the Kore- 
ish had abandoned the search after them 
as fruitless. The daughter of Abu Bakr 
brought them the two swift camels, and a 



34 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

guide. Mahomet mounted the swifter of the 
two, Al Caswa, thenceforward his favourite, 
and with his friend reached Medina in safety 
in June 622 a.d., where he was greeted with 
honour by his new allies, and congratula- 
tions by his old disciples. 

The Hegira is the epoch in the prophet's 
career from which his worldly success dates, 
but it marks the beginning also of a grave 
deterioration in his moral character. The 
earnest preacher of a pure theology and a 
strict righteousness, undaunted in the day of 
his weakness and danger, becomes in the 
day of his power a fanatical despot, and is at 
times cruel with the cruelty peculiar to fana- 
ticism. The single aim of propagating his 
faith overrides at times all considerations of 
justice and mercy, and it is often hard to 
draw the line between religious zeal and per- 
sonal ambition. 

After the flight to Medina the Koran is 
pitched in a tone of pitiless animosity against 
the unbelieving Koreish ; and the severity 
of its utterances was matched by deeds of 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 35 

corresponding violence. The prophet would 
lead the prayers in the mosque, and then 
conduct a predatory raid upon some caravan 
of the miscreant tribe, He became a poly- 
gamous pope, and the mosque was his St. 
Peter's and the Vatican in one. Here he 
preached, here he received embassies, here 
he planned his campaigns. The Koran, about 
the fifth year of the Hegira, becomes little 
better than a military gazette. It announces 
victories, bestows commendation on their 
valiant, and incites to further deeds of 
prowess. A fresh revelation was produced 
to meet every emergency, removing all ob- 
stacles to the advance of the faithful which 
might arise from a too scrupulous deference to 
ancient customs, or even to the principles of 
common humanity and justice. By special 
divine permission, the sanctity of the month 
Rajan was violated, which from immemorial 
antiquity in Arabia, had been consecrated to 
peace j 1 by special permission captives were 
executed. 2 Obnoxious unbelievers in Medina 

1 Sura 2. 2 Suras 47, 43. 



36 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

were assassinated with the connivance, if not 
by the command of the prophet, and a bless- 
ing was publicly pronounced in the mosque 
by himself on the assassins. By special reve- 
lation the destruction of some date trees, 
which interfered with some military operation 
of the prophet's, was authorized. By special 
revelation the marriage of the prophet with 
another man's wife was sanctioned, and he 
was exempted from confining himself to four 
wives, the limit placed by himself on the po- 
lygamy of his disciples. The deeds of cruelty 
which darkened the career of Mahomet at 
Medina culminated in the cold-blooded mas- 
sacre of all the men belonging to a hostile 
Jewish tribe, the Bani Coreitza, and the sub- 
jugation of all the women to slavery. To 
cite the words of Gibbon : ' Seven hundred 
jews were dragged in chains to the market- 
place of the city, they descended alive into 
the grave prepared for their execution and 
burial, and the apostle beheld with an in- 
flexible eye the slaughter of his helpless 
enemies/ 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 37 

In spite of these repulsive cruelties few 
will refrain from a feeling of sympathy with 
the prophet, when the dream of his life was 
accomplished and his beloved and native 
city Mecca opened her gates to him. Few 
will refrain from admiration as they contem- 
plate him gravely and majestically pointing 
with his staff to the idols which lined the 
walls of the Kaaba, commanding their de- 
struction one by one, and exclaiming as the 
largest fell with a crash: 'Truth has come, and 
falsehood vanishes away/ Few can contem- 
plate without interest mingled with awe, the 
last days and dying moments of the man who 
had achieved so great and wonderful a work. 
Two years only after his reception at Mecca, 
in the sixty-third year of his age, he was 
smitten with a mortal fever. He anticipated 
his end: 'The choice hath been offered me/ he 
said, 'of longer life, with Paradise hereafter, 
or of meeting my Lord at once; I have chosen 
to meet my Lord/ He crawled from his 
bed one night to select a spot for his burial. 
For several days he still conducted, but with 



38 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

feeble and fainting strength, the public prayers 
in the mosque. At last he transferred this 
duty to his faithful friend Abu Bakr. Yet 
once more there was a flash of vital energy ; 
he even mounted the pulpit, and, in tones 
which reached far beyond the outer doors, he 
called upon the people, like Samuel, to witness 
that he had not defrauded any, nor taught 
anything but what God had put in his mouth. 
This final exertion probably hastened his 
death. He returned to his bed; he knew 
the end was near. ' Oh Lord, I beseech 
Thee assist me in the agonies of death/ 
he was heard to murmur ; and presently in 
broken whispers, ' Lord pardon my sins 
.... eternity in Paradise . . . pardon, 
yes ! I come .... among my fellow citizens 
on High/ These were the last words of the 
prophet of Arabia. 

The contrast between the origin of Chris- 
tianity and Islam is made perhaps sufficiently 
plain by such a sketch even as I have at- 
tempted of the career of Mahomet. Yet it 
may be instructive to complete and clench 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 



39 



this contrast by summing up a few salient 
points. 

Contrast then, first of all, the essentially 
human character of the career of the founder 
of Islam with the essentially superhuman cha- 
racter of the life of the Founder of Chris- 
tianity. Mahomet did not lay claim to the 
power of working miracles ; such as have 
been ascribed to him bear on the very face 
of them the marks of being the dress with 
which the real personality has been clothed 
by the adoration of a later age. Strip it off, 
and the true man stands out clear, consistent, 
and intelligible. You see a bold reformer 
who in early life rises to the conception of a 
purer theology and morality than the mass of 
his countrymen, who gradually persuades him- 
self that he is the depositary of divine revela- 
tions, commissioned to unite the manifold and 
conflicting elements of national life under one 
simple rigid religious system. There is no- 
thing miraculous in his career, except so far 
as all genius rises above the ordinary level of 
character, and produces extraordinary effects. 



4-0 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

But in the life of our blessed Lord, the 
superhuman is of its essence. His birth 
is superhumanly announced, superhumanly 
effected. ' He came by a new and living way Y 
Prophecy upon prophecy, uttered ages before 
His coming, are fulfilled in the circumstances 
of His life, even to the most minute par- 
ticulars. Superhuman He is in deed and in 
speech every day, although inexpressibly 
lowly in manner of life. Superhuman He is 
above all in the hour of death and in the 
resurrection from the grave. And these 
circumstances do not belong to the accidents, 
but to the essence, of the life. Take them 
away, especially for instance the Incarnation 
and the Resurrection, and the whole fabric of 
the life, so to say, falls to pieces. We cannot 
deal with the history of that life as we can 
with the history of Mahomet or of Christian 
saints, round whom a parasitical growth of the 
miraculous has accumulated, concealing the 
real shape beneath. We cannot expunge the 
miraculous from the life of Jesus, and leave 
a consistent and intelligible residuum. The 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 4 1 

experiment has been tried, but it breaks 
down. 

The rationalising process which would di- 
vest our Lord's life of the miraculous, brings 
out an irrational result. It leaves us a hazy 
and shadowy figure, totally inadequate to 
stand for the founder of a religion which has 
produced such results as the Rationalist is 
constrained to admit that Christianity has 
produced. The phenomena of Christianity 
remain, but without an explanation. They 
hang, as it were, in the air, without a founda- 
tion to support them. 

Take another point : — the moral declen- 
sion of Mahomet, parallel with the advance 
of his career. The period when he stands 
on the highest moral level is early in life. 
The meditative, musing, retiring shepherd 
lad, pondering amidst the solitude of his 
native hills, feeling his way to a purer the- 
ology and higher morality than his fore- 
fathers, then racked by doubts and fears 
concerning his mission, then, when convinced 
of it, calmly and tenaciously adhering to his 



42 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

aim, amidst persecution and distress ; this 
is an interesting, an elevating, and beautiful 
picture to look at. But of the pure, inno- 
cent, kindly youth, very much is effaced in 
the picture of mingled fanaticism and sen- 
suality which Mahomet presents to us in 
later years. It is perfectly true that he re- 
tained, to the last, many of the simple, frugal 
habits which were characteristic of his earlier 
life. To the last he loved to tend the flock 
and to milk the goats. He was playful and 
tender in his treatment of children and of his 
intimate friends. Neither in dress, nor in 
fare, nor the appointments of his house, did 
he affect any of the luxury and splendour of 
an Oriental despot. But the retention of 
these innocent customs cannot redeem his 
character from the stains of sensuality and 
cruelty occasionally very great. Facts are 
stubborn things, and facts are conclusive on 
these points. The best excuse for these blots 
is that Mahomet became a fanatic ; and that 
fanaticism unhinges both the mental and 
moral equilibrium. To the fanatic the end 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 43 

is everything, and he relentlessly pursues it, 
without misgivings and without remorse. 
His moral sense at last becomes so confused 
and perverted that he gets to think whatever 
he does in promotion of his one great end 
must be right. 

How far fanaticism itself, or at least the 
tendency to it, may be due to peculiarities of 
physical temperament is too deep and com- 
plicated a subject to enter upon here. It 
belongs, indeed, rather to the physiologist 
than to the historian. It will suffice to re- 
mark that in the case of Mahomet there were 
certainly many symptoms common to his 
epileptical or hysterical fits, and to his fits of 
supposed inspiration. Both were generally 
preceded by great depression of spirits, and 
accompanied by a cold perspiration, a tink- 
ling or humming noise in the ears, a twitch- 
ing of the lips, stertorous breathing, and 
convulsive movements of all the limbs, at 
times communicated by a kind of electric 
sympathy even to the camel on which he 
rode. 



44 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

The Dervish and Fakir testify to the 
common Oriental notion that a kind of frenzy 
or ecstasy must be the natural concomitant 
of the reception of divine revelation. 

The most essential mark of high Christian 
character is enthusiasm, deep, fervent indeed 
and intense, but sober in its manifestation. 
This is only the faint reflex where it is found, 
of the character of the founder of Christianity. 
A calm, consistent enthusiasm, to be about 
His Heavenly Father's business, and to finish 
the work which was given him to do, consti- 
tutes the divine, the matchless beauty of that 
life. Serenely, he moves on, neither with 
fanatical haste, nor stoical resolution, but in 
the unwavering enthusiasm of love to His 
appointed end — the cross on Calvary, the 
triumph over death and sin, the accepted 
sacrifice, the return to the place whence He 
came. The earthly life rises in grandeur, 
majesty, and beauty as it advances, not be- 
cause it is not faultless at the beginning, but 
because, as it approaches the consummation 
of the great act to which all the prelude has 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 45 

been working up, it naturally takes a deeper, 
a more awful tone. It is in the final scene 
that the superhuman character of the great 
Actor and of the great tragedy itself, as well 
as the clear perception of its momentous con- 
sequences on the human race, is most deeply 
impressed upon us. 1 Then it is more than 
ever that we bow our heads, and exclaim 
with the centurion : 'Truly this was the Son 
of God/ 

Take another point. In the beginning of 
his career Mahomet was a preacher of right- 
eousness and of the unity of God, regardless 
of opposition and danger. He relied simply 
on the intrinsic merits of his message to 
make its own way. But, as time went on, he 
appealed to the pride, ambition, and love of 
enterprise and plunder inherent in the Arab 
to promote the propagation of this faith. 
War, the natural occupation of the Arab, 

1 The popular * Life of Jesus Christ,' by Dr. Farrar, seems, 
in our humble judgment, to labour under a fatal defect in fail- 
ing to bring out this upward, onward, continuous movement : it 
presents a series of brilliant pictures, instead of presenting one 
great picture. 



46 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

became invested with a sacred character. 
Religious zeal and military ardour coalesced 
in the followers of Mahomet to a degree not 
equalled in the Scotch Covenanters, or the 
Ironsides of Cromwell. The joys of paradise 
were dangled before the eyes of the Maho- 
metan warrior as an incitement to his valour; 
the horrors of hell were ever urged as a 
deterrent from faint-heartedness and sloth. 
In Mahomet's first encounter with the Roman 
army, one of his soldiers complained of the 
intolerable heat. ' Hell is much hotter/ was 
the indignant reply of the apostle. His flight 
to Medina was a direct renunciation of purely 
moral and spiritual influence in favour of 
more material and carnal aids. His entrance 
into Medina savors more of the political 
than religious leader. The chief men of the 
town went out to meet him, and conducted 
him into it with pomp, riding by his side, and 
arrayed in glittering armour. The disciples 
of Mahomet have from that day to this relied 
largely upon force for the propagation of the 
faith. 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 47 

Diametrically opposite to this was the 
method of the Founder of the Christian re- 
ligion. The opportunity of His coming was 
favourable for the assertion of pretensions to 
temporal dominion. The Jews were fretting 
under the yoke of foreign conquerors. The 
least spark would have sufficed to kindle the 
flame of insurrection. They had persuaded 
themselves that their Messiah would appear 
as the champion of their freedom, to restore 
their long-lost national independence, and to 
extend the dominion and glory of their em- 
pire far beyond the limits reached in the 
golden days of King Solomon. 

The Apostles, even, and familiar friends of 
Jesus, were affected with this material view of 
the Messiah's kingdom. We see it in the 
request of St. James and St. John to sit ' the 
one on His right hand, the other on His left, in 
His kingdom/ We see it again in the obser- 
vation of the two disciples walking to Em- 
maus : 'We trusted that it had been He 
which should have redeemed Israel/ implying 
that His death on the cross was in their view 



48 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

the final frustration of the national hopes. 
We see it for the last time in the question of 
the Apostles after the Resurrection : ' Lord, 
wilt Thou at this time restore the kingdom to 
Israel ?' It was the steadfast opposition of- 
fered by Christ to this view of His kingdom, 
coupled with His searching exposure of 
national sins, which, humanly speaking, cost 
Him His life. Had He ever acceded to the 
Devil's suggestion to command stones to 
become bread in the sense of using His divine 
power to obtain material and earthly advan- 
tages, or had He yielded to that other tempta- 
tion to fall down and worship Satan as the 
price of earthly kingdoms — that is, had He 
resorted to artifice, to intrigue, to violence — it 
is plain that He would have been supported 
by the Jews, and that a worldly kingdom 
might have been His. Into such snares of the 
Devil the founder of Islam fell. The power 
of Mohammedanism as one of the religions of 
the world dates from the day when Mahomet, 
flying from his enemies, was received by his 
partisans at Medina with all the honours of 



CHRISTIANITY AND IST.AM. 49 

a worldly prince. The power of the Gospel 
dates from the day when its Founder sur- 
rendered Himself to His enemies saying; 'If 
ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, I am He ;' when 
He refused to summon legions of angels to 
His rescue, and was abandoned by all His 
earthly friends. The power of Islam dates 
from an appeal to the sword of the flesh : 
the power of Christianity dates from the day 
when Christ bade His disciple put up the 
sword into his sheath, because ' all they that 
took the sword should perish by the sword/ 
In the steady decay of all countries under 
Moslem rule we see the fulfilment of that 
prophecy. The immediate strength of Mo- 
hammedanism is that which ultimately every- 
where becomes its weakness — its appeal to 
material aids for extension and support ; its 
appeal in some degree also to the material 
and sensual rather than to the spiritual ele- 
ment in the nature of the convert. 

Lastly, the character of Mahomet, how- 
ever much owing to the elevation of his 
genius, it rises above the ordinary type of 



50 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

his countrymen, is yet as a whole thorough- 
ly Oriental, thoroughly Arabian. Oriental 
dreaminess, Oriental frenzy, Oriental endur- 
ance and fortitude, Oriental sensuality, Ori- 
ental despotism, Arabian enterprise, Arabian 
vindictiveness, Arabian subtlety, all have 
their place along with higher and nobler 
qualities in the composition of the great pro- 
phet's character. 

The pure character of the Founder of 
Christianity does not bear the mark of any 
nationality. Tt was constructed/ as has 
been beautifully said, ' at the confluence of 
three races, the Jewish, the Roman, and the 
Greek ; each of which had strong national 
peculiarities of its own. A single touch, a 
single taint of any one of those peculiarities, 
and the character would have been national, 
not universal ; transient, not eternal. It 
might have been the highest character in his- 
tory, but it would have been disqualified for 
being the ideal. Supposing it to have been 
human, whether it were the effort of a real 
man to attain moral excellence or a moral 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 5 1 

imagination of the writers of the Gospels, the 
chances were infinite against its escaping any 
tincture of the fanaticism, formalism, and ex- 
clusiveness of the Jew, of the political pride 
of the Roman, of the intellectual pride of the 
Greek. Yet it has entirely escaped them all.' 1 
Most true words ! To those who would fain 
expunge the miraculous from the life of Jesus 
we may well reply there is one miracle w T hich 
we defy you to remove, and that is the char- 
acter of Jesus himself. In the literal sense 
of the expression, ' in Christ Jesus there is 
neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, 
Barbarian or Scythian, bond nor free/ He 
was the Son of Man because His character 
was not the offspring of any one race, or 
caste, or class of men ; and we may say 
boldly that no one could be such a Son of 
Man unless He was also what Jesus declared 
Himself to be, the Son of God. 

1 ' Lectures on the Study of History/ by Professor Gold-win 
Smith, p. 137. 



52 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 



LECTURE II. 

THE THEOLOGY OF THE BIBLE AND THAT OF THE KORAN 
CONTRASTED. 

' Fecisti nos ad Te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donee requiescat 
in Te.'-— August. Confess, i. 

Before attempting to draw out the contrasts 
between the teaching of the Bible and that 
of the Koran, it may be instructive to notice 
the differences between the two in their out- 
ward form ; in construction and style. 

What we call ' the Bible/ is in fact a col- 
lection of many books. The common use 
of the word Bible to designate the sacred 
volume dates, I believe, from the thirteenth 
century; and we still very often speak of 
the * Sacred writings/ the ■ Holy Scriptures/ 
terms which in the earliest ages of the Church 
were almost exclusively employed. But the 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 53 

name Bible ' the Book/ has become the most 
familiar, and is perhaps the most precious to 
us, not only as implying the sovereign su- 
premacy of that book over all other books, 
but also because it expresses the great truth 
that although 'the Book' be made up of 
many parts uttered at ' sundry times and in 
divers manners/ yet is it after all essentially 
one: inasmuch as the thread of one divine 
purpose and design runs through the whole. 
The writings range over a vast space of 
time, and are cast into a variety of forms — 
the plain prose of narrative, the poetry of 
prophecy or praise, the direct teaching of 
precepts, of exhortation, of reproof, or the 
more indirect of parable, allegory, or vision. 
But the ultimate aim of each and all is the 
same — to conduct men along the stream of 
God's truth winding its way to the Gospel, 
as the last and fullest revelation of His love, 
and to lead them to fall down before Jesus 
Christ and Him crucified, as the central 
figure in that final dispensation. 

One consequence of the writings which 



54 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

compose the Bible being cast into such 
manifold shapes is that the Book becomes 
in a manner ' all things to all men/ It fits 
into every fold, so to say, of the human 
mind and the human heart. It can speak 
to 'all nations, kindreds, and tongues/ and 
win converts from all. 

In the Bible, then, there is singleness of 
aim, but variety of expression. In the Ko- 
ran, on the contrary, there is no continuity 
of design, but great uniformity in expression. 
On the one hand it is fragmentary and inco- 
herent ; on the other monotonous and level. 

The Koran consists of 1 14 chapters or Su- 
ras, each of which pretends to be a verbatim 
copy of a distinct revelation made to Maho- 
met. The revelations were written on palm 
leaves or mutton blade-bones, as Mahomet 
recited them to his disciples, and were after 
his death collected into one volume, but with- 
out the least regard to chronological order, 
first by his great friend and immediate succes- 
sor, Abu Bakr, and afterwards by the Caliph 
Othman. There is not much more connec- 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 55 

tion between them than between the several 
grains in a heap of sand, or the several beads 
on a necklace. There is in the Koran no 
movement onwards, as in the Bible, from a 
definite starting point to a definite goal in the 
history of God's dealings with man. There 
is no sequence, no coherence between the 
parts. The perusal, therefore, may be com- 
pared, not to the unrolling of a scroll, but to 
the picking up of scattered leaves, on each 
of which some distinct oracle is inscribed. 

But while there is no continuity, there is, 
on the other hand, very little variety. Ap- 
proximate chronological arrangements of the 
several Suras have been made by Sir W. 
Muir and others, based on a careful com- 
parison of their contents and style ; and from 
this some variations in their character may be 
discovered, corresponding with the tone of 
the prophet's mind, and the circumstances of 
his life, when they were delivered. But still 
there is nothing which approaches the many- 
coloured texture of our sacred volume. 
Having been all produced within the com- 



56 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

pass of little more than twenty years, and 
delivered through one medium, the Koran 
presents the exact reverse of the 'sundry 
times and diverse manners ' of the Bible. It 
is all of one time and one manner, and the 
monotonous reiterations with which the boojc 
abounds are exceedingly tedious and dull. 
Poetry, which sometimes rises to grandeur, 
alternates with exceedingly dull didactic prose 
or puerile legend. Of parables there are but 
few specimens ; and these are for the most 
part borrowed from Biblical sources, and 
spoiled in transplantation. In the character- 
istic words of Gibbon, 'the European infidel 
will peruse with impatience the endless inco- 
herent rhapsody of fable, and precept, and 
declamation, which seldom excites a senti- 
ment or an idea, which sometimes crawls in 
the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds/ 
This language is perhaps rather over- 
strained, and seems to betray the irritation 
of one who had but recently risen from the 
irksome task; but it is substantially true never- 
theless, and the only other (so-called) sacred 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 57 

book that I have attempted to read which 
exceeds the Koran in tediousness is the Book 
of Mormon. That book is much more nearly 
the audacious travesty of the Bible, which 
the Koran is not uncommonly called, than the 
Koran itself. The term ' travesty ' indeed is 
not fairly applicable to the Koran, since it 
does not appear that Mahomet was well 
acquainted, if at all, with the canonical books 
of the Old and New Testaments. There is 
no evidence in the Koran of deliberate inven- 
tion ; it is rather a badly digested compilation 
of materials, derived from a variety of sources, 
true and false, historical and mythical. The 
Book of Mormon, on the other hand, is a 
direct, though very tame and feeble, travesty 
of the Bible in style; and though much of the 
didactic matter is borrowed from the sacred 
volume, that which affects to be historical is 
pure and simple fabrication, 

A book, however, which has so long 
remained an object of veneration to so many 
millions of the human race as the Koran has 
remained, must possess some intrinsic merits, 



58 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

some singular power of fascination. These 
are to be found partly in the great truths 
which it inculcates (of which more presently), 
and in the tone of high authority in which 
they are inculcated, but also partly in the 
style in which they are expressed. Here, 
again, the contrast with the Bible is striking 
and instructive. In the Bible, the matter 
exceeds in value by a hundredfold the man- 
ner in which that matter is expressed. But 
in the Koran it is to a great extent the 
other way. Although the exact meaning of 
a writer must always suffer some detriment 
by the translation of his thoughts into a 
language different from that in which they 
were first conceived and expressed, yet pro- 
bably there is no book in the world which 
has lost less by translation than the Bible. 
This is more especially true of our English 
translation. The more delicate shades of 
meaning sometimes disappear, no doubt, in 
the English translation of the Bible, as they 
must in the translation of any book ; but the 
beauty of the original is rivalled, is often 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 59 

indeed surpassed, by the beauty of the trans- 
lation. And this is not surprising, when we 
consider that the Greek of the New Testa- 
ment, and, though only in some portions and 
in a less degree, the Hebrew of the Old 
Testament, belong to periods when those 
languages were in a state of decadence; 
whereas the English of the translation repre- 
sents the golden era of our national tongue, 
the era of its greatest fertility, and vigour, 
and grandeur — the era of Spenser, of Shak- 
speare, and of Hooker. 

The Koran, on the other hand, was ori- 
ginally written in the purest Arabic. Maho- 
met continually appeals to its extraordinary 
superhuman beauty and purity, as an evi- 
dence of the divine source from which he 
declared it to flow. He challenged unbe- 
lievers to produce, even with the aid of 
genii, any passage worthy to be compared 
with a single chapter in the Koran. Those 
who are acquainted with Arabic inform us 
that in its purest type it is in the highest 
degree copious, musical, and elegant ; and 



60 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

that these qualities all meet in the Koran. 
Consequently there is scarcely any book in 
the world which loses so much by transla- 
tion. The charm of its graceful, harmoni- 
ous, rhythmical, sonorous sentences utterly 
evaporates, and the matter, stripped of its 
gay attire, appears to the ordinary reader in- 
sufferably dull and commonplace. 

Nothing, however, more forcibly illustrates 
the poverty of the Koran, viewed as what it 
claims to be, a complete revelation of theo- 
logical and moral truths, than its inability 
to stand the test of translation. If it was 
really a complete treasury of divine truth, the 
shape of the treasure-house would be of 
little importance compared with the jewels it 
enshrined. But such is not the case ; and it 
is to the consideration of these contents that 
we now turn : from the form of the book to 
the book itself. 

The Koran may fairly be judged by the 
definition of its purport as laid down in its 
own pages. At the close of the twelfth 
Sura we read : ' The Koran is not a newly 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 6 1 

invented fiction ; but a confirmation of those 
Scriptures which have been revealed before 
it, and a distinct unfolding of everything 
necessary in respect either of faith or prac- 
tice, and a direction and mercy unto them 
that believe/ In other words, the Koran 
claims to be a complete supplement to ail 
preceding revelation, to be the final state- 
ment of God's will, both concerning dog- 
matic belief and practical conduct. 

In the remainder of this lecture it is pro- 
posed to examine the theological teaching 
of the Koran by the light of this claim. 
Does it only confirm the teaching of the 
Bible respecting the nature of the Divine 
Being, or does it tell us anything which, sup- 
posing it to be true seems an important addition 
to the knowledge of Mankind concerning the 
relation of God to man, and of man to God ? 

The Koran, then, to begin with, teaches 
a pure, rigid, austere monotheism ; a belief 
in one absolute God, not as a philosophic 
abstraction, but a living Being, exercising a 
vital energy upon the world which He has 

G 



62 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

made. The finest passages in the Koran 
are, undoubtedly, those in which the majesty, 
and power, and wisdom, of this infinite Being 
are set forth. Even through the veil of trans- 
lation some of the grandeur of the original is 
discernible ! For example : 'God ! there is no 
God but He: the living, the self-subsisting: 
neither slumber nor sleep layeth hold of 
Him. To Him belongeth whatever is in 
Heaven or on earth. Who is he that can 
intercede with Him but through His good 
pleasure. He knoweth that which is past 
and that which is to come unto men, and 
they shall not comprehend anything that He 
knoweth but so far as He pleaseth. His 
throne is extended over Heaven and Earth, 
and the preservation of both is no burden 
unto Him/ 

Or again: 'It is He who hath created the 
Heavens and the Earth in truth, and whenso- 
ever He saith unto a thing " Be," it is. With 
Him are the keys of the secret things, none 
know r eth them besides Himself: He knoweth 
that which is on the dry land and in the sea : 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN, 63 

there falleth no leaf but He knoweth it ; 
neither is there a grain in the dark parts of 
the earth, nor a green thing, nor a dry thing, 
but it is noted in His clear book. It is He 
who causeth you to sleep by night, and 
knoweth what ye merit by day: He also 
awaketh you therein, that the preordained 
term of your lives may be fulfilled : then unto 
Him shall ye return, and He shall declare 
unto you that which ye have wrought/ 

The wonders -of the natural world as evi- 
dences of the existence and powerof a Creator 
are frequently dwelt upon in language of 
considerable fervour and force, and at times, 
doubtless in the original language, of high 
poetical beauty, e.g.: ' Now in the creation of 
Heaven and Earth, and in the vicissitudes of 
day and night ; in the ship which saileth in 
the sea laden with things profitable for man- 
kind ; in the rain which God sendeth from 
Heaven, quickening thereby the dead earth ; 
and replenishing the same with all sorts of 
cattle ; in the changes of the winds, and in 
the clouds that are compelled to do service 



64 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

between Heaven and Earth, there are signs 
to men of understanding/ 

The omnipresence and omniscience of 
God, and the unerring justice of His future 
judgment upon men, are declared with earn- 
estness and eloquence. ' There is no pri- 
vate discourse among three persons, but He 
is the fourth of them ; nor among five, but 
He is the sixth of them ; neither among 
a smaller nor a larger, but He is with them 
wheresoever they be ; and He v/ill declare 
unto them that which they have done on the 
day of resurrection; for God knoweth all 
things.' ■ The Lord knoweth the secrets of 
men's hearts, and there is nothing in Heaven 
or on earth but it is written in a clear book/ 
And again, in one of the earliest Suras : 'When 
the earth shall tremble with her quaking, and 
the earth shall cast forth her burthens, and 
man shall say, "What aileth her?" in that 
day shall she unfold her tidings, because the 
Lord shall have inspired her ; in that day 
shall mankind advance in ranks, that they 
may behold their works, and whoever shall 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 65 

have wrought good of the weight of a grain 
shall behold it; and whoever shall have 
wrought evil of the weight of a grain shall 
behold it/ 

We may freely acknowledge the beauty 
and the truth of these and similar passages, 
and yet heartily concur in the judgment of 
Gibbon that the loftiest of such strains in the 
Koran 'must yield to the sublime simplicity 
of the Book of Job/ and we may well add 
the Book of Psalms. The mercy and bene- 
ficence of God, especially as manifested in 
His bountiful provision for the physical wants 
of man, and, on the other hand, the too fre- 
quent pride and ingratitude of man in de- 
manding, or expecting as a right, advantages 
which are conceded only as free and un- 
merited favours, are topics frequently and 
powerfully handled, but, again we must say, 
at a distance vastly below the treatment of 
such subjects in the Psalms and Prophets of 
Holy Writ. On the other hand the absolute 
predestination of men to happiness or misery 
is repeatedly affirmed with a degree of harsh- 

G* 



66 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

ness which it is difficult to reconcile with the 
attribute of perfect mercy assigned in other 
passages, and which finds no parallel in the 
pages of the Bible, where God is represented 
as a Being, Who, in the beautiful words of 
our Collect, 'declares His almighty power 
most chiefly in showing mercy and pity/ 

Take, for instance, such a passage as this : 
'This is a revelation of the most mighty, 
the merciful God, that thou mayest warn a 
people whose fathers were not warned, and 
who live in negligence ; our sentence hath 
justly been pronounced against the greater 
part of them, wherefore they shall not*be- 
lieve. We have set a bar before them and 
a bar behind them ; and we have covered 
them with darkness, wherefore they shall not 
see. It shall be equal unto them whether 
thou preach unto them, or do not preach unto 
them ; they shall not believe/ Or again, yet 
more boldly ; 'Whomsoever God shall please 
to direct, He will open his breast to receive 
the faith of Islam ; but whomsoever God 
shall please to lead into error, He will render 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 6j 

his breast straight and narrow as though he 
were climbing up to Heaven :' i. e.> attempt- 
ing an impossible thing. 

Place side by side with such passages as 
these the strongest language to be found in 
the Bible concerning the impossibility of 
opening the ears or eyes of some men to the 
reception of divine truth, and the difference 
will be at once apparent. In the Koran this 
impenetrable hardness is represented as the 
inevitable consequence of an everlasting, 
immutable decree of God : in the Bible as 
the inevitable consequence of perverseness 
and obduracy on the part of man's free will : 
the working of a natural law whereby pow- 
ers which are long disused become at last 
incapable of acting. He who persistently 
refuses to see or hear God's truth becomes at 
last unable to see or hear it, just as he who 
should refuse to move his arm would in time 
lose all power to move it. This is the im- 
port of such passages as ' from him that hath 
not shall be taken away even that which he 
hath ; ' or, ' as they did not like to retain God 



68 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

in their knowledge, God gave them over to 
a reprobate mind/ Or .... 'because they 
received not the love of the truth that they 
might be saved, for this cause God shall send 
them strong delusions that they should be- 
lieve a lie/ The same meaning underlies 
those passages also where it is more boldly said 
that God hardened the heart of Pharaoh/ or, 
1 He hath blinded their eyes and hardened 
their heart / or, ' whom He will He harden- 
eth/ A study of the connection in which those 
passages occur will always show that such 
hardening or binding is not arbitrary or initi- 
atory on the part of God. On the contrary it 
is the judicial penalty of long continued resis- 
tance to God's long-suffering efforts to soften 
the heart and to open the eyes. The design, the 
desire of God is that ' all men should be saved, 
and come to the knowledge of the truth / but 
man is free ; he is not coerced into goodness. 
God does not reverse His moral law to save 
a man in spite of himself, any more than He 
reverses his physical laws. If a man wilfully 
puts his hand into the fire, it will be burned ; 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 69 

if he sins, he will ultimately suffer for it; if 
he shuts his mental eyes to the light of God's 
truth, he will not see it 

The power of God, especially in regard 
to predestination, being brought out into such 
strong prominence in the Koran, it is not 
surprising that fear and passive resignation, 
rather than love and active devotion, appear 
to be the prevailing attitude of the Moham- 
medan mind towards Him. This is indicated 
by the very name of their religion, 'Islam 
or ' resignation to the will of God;' and by the 
designation of the faithful as 'Mussulman' or 
'Moslem/ 'the resigned.' It was the aim of the 
founder of the sect of the Wahabees in the last 
century to restore the faith of Mahomet in its 
purity and integrity, as taught in the Koran. 
The absolute power of the Deity is expressed 
by the Wahabees in the simple formula ' La 
Ilah ilia Allah.' The words themselves seem 
harmless and true : literally rendered, they 
merely signify 'There is no God but one God;' 
but their full import, we are assured, amounts 
to a great deal more. It amounts to a de- 



JO THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

claration that this one Supreme Being is 'the 
only force in the world, and that all things 
else, matter or spirit, instinct or intelligence, 
physical or moral, are nothing but pure, un- 
conditional passiveness, alike in movement or 
in quiescence, in action or in capacity/ 1 Such 
is the God of the sect which prides itself on 
having revived the teaching of the Koran in 
its utmost purity. Such, then, is the God of 
the Koran, the God whom we are there 
taught to believe was the God whom Abra- 
ham worshipped in spirit and in truth, of 
whom the true knowledge had been lost, 
which it was the mission of Mahomet to 
restore. Whether the God of Abraham is 
more fully and faithfully presented to us in 
the pages of the Koran or in the pages of 
the Bible, I leave the readers of these pas- 
sages which I have contrasted, and others 
like them, to decide. Had Mahomet really 
known the Bible, it seems almost incredible 
that he should have imagined himself the 
depositary of a new and special revelation 

1 W. G. Palgrave, 6 Central Arabia,' vol. i., p. 365, cc. viii. 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. J I 

concerning the attributes of the Divine 
Being ; for all, and more than all, which he 
affects to disclose was to be found already 
revealed in the Books of Genesis, of Job, 
and of the Psalms alone. The intervention 
of the Angel Gabriel would have been a su- 
perfluous waste of divine power. But it ap- 
pears to be very doubtful whether Mahomet 
could read; and, if he could, yet more doubt- 
ful whether he ever perused the canonical 
books of the Old and New Testaments. 

He may have read, or heard read, por- 
tions of the Prophets or the Psalms, which 
may have suggested some of the grander 
passages in the Koran about the attributes 
of the Deity ; but, on the other hand, all his 
knowledge of Biblical incidents and cha- 
racters seems not derived from the sacred 
history itself, but culled from a variety of 
sources, the Talmud, the Targum, and the 
Midrash of the Jews, the spurious Gospels 
of the Christians, and Arabian and Syrian 
tradition, ranging from the beautiful and pro- 
bable down to the puerile and grotesque. 



72 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

The history of the most prominent cha- 
racters of the Old Testament is either totally 
disfigured in the Koran, or supplemented 
with long circumstantial stories, which for 
the most part destroy the consistency and 
personality of the character. Some of the 
tales, for instance, related about Abraham 
are beautiful and instructive, and in harmony 
with what we read elsewhere about the pa- 
triarch, though they may not be actually true; 
but others are so silly that no sound critic 
could possibly admit the incidents of both as 
real occurrences in the life of the same person. 

As a specimen of the higher kind, take 
the following account, borrowed from the 
Talmud, of the conversion of Abraham from 
the idolatry of his countrymen: 'When the 
night overshadowed him, he saw a star, and 
he said, "This is my Lord;" but when it set 
he said, " I like not gods which set." And 
when he saw the moon rising he said, " This 
is my Lord;" but when he saw it set he said, 
" Verily, if my Lord direct me not, I shall 
become one of those who go astray." And 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 73 

when he saw the sun rising he said, "This is 
my Lord, this is the greatest;" but when it 
set he said, " O, my people, verily I am clean 
of that w r hich ye associate with God: I direct 
my face unto Him Who has created the 
Heavens and the earth. I am of the right 
faith, and am not one of the idolaters." ' We 
may fairly believe that we have here, though 
cast into that vivid dramatic form which 
legend commonly assumes, the record of a 
true fact : the gradual elevation of the patri- 
arch's mind from the superstitious worship of 
the heavenly bodies prevalent among his 
countrymen, to a purer and more spiritual 
faith. The accounts, on the other hand, of 
his destruction of the images f ancestral 
deities, and of the attempt of Nimrod to put 
him to death by burning, are too foolish to be 
looked upon as anything but purely mythical. 
The life of Moses is not so much distorted 
as the lives of some other characters, Solo- 
mon, for instance, who is turned into a kind of 
wonder-working magician ; but the narrative of 
the Exodus, and of the settlement in Canaan, is 

H 



74 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

overlaid with such a mass of tedious legendary 
rubbish, that the mind of the reader becomes 
fatigued and bewildered, and thankfully es- 
capes from the fantastic shadows of Fairy- 
land into the serene daylight of real history. 
Viewing the Koran, therefore, as a compU 
lation, the critical, artistic power of the com- 
piler cannot be ranked high. 

It is needless to say that the idea of a 
plurality of persons in one Godhead was utterly 
repugnant to the rigid monotheism taught by 
Mahomet. His vague acquaintance with 
Christianity seems to have led him into sup- 
posing that Christians acknowledged, and 
even in some degree worshipped, what he 
calls ' companions ' of God, and taught that 
sons and daughters were born to him. This 
strange misconception seems to have arisen 
partly from confused information about the 
doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which he seems 
actually to have thought involved the worship 
of God the Father, Jesus, and the Virgin 
Mary as co-ordinate deities ; partly per- 
haps from the tendency to saint-worship, 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 75 

which was beginning to grow up in the 
Church. 

The foundation, therefore, of the Chris- 
tian creed, the divine Sonship and incarna- 
tion of our blessed Lord, was emphatically 
denied and denounced by the apostle of 
Islam. It is doubtful indeed if the Christian 
doctrine was ever fairly and reasonably put 
before him, the Christianity with which he 
came in contact being probably tainted with 
Manicheism, Nestorianism, and other com- 
mon forms of Oriental error ; but at any 
rate he conceived it to be a part of his mis- 
sion as a preacher of pure monotheism to 
declare that Jesus was not God, and that 
divine honours ought not to be paid to Him. 
Mahomet's aim was to show that the life and 
character of Jesus had been totally misun- 
derstood and misrepresented : that He had 
really come only as a prophet, only to begin 
the work which Mahomet himself was des- 
tined to complete : namely, the restoration 
to its original purity of the monotheistic 
faith of Abraham ; a design which the be- 



/6 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

lievers in Jesus had frustrated by unduly ex- 
alting Him to the level of the Deity. 

Against the Jews he maintained that 
Jesus was, like himself, an inspired prophet 
and reformer ; against the Christians that 
He was not more than this. Hence the pe- 
culiar aversion of Jew and Christian alike 
from the religion of Islam. Each was irri- 
tated by the assumption of superiority on the 
part of this rival to both, which required the 
Jew to believe more, and the Christian to 
believe less, than was contained in the creed 
of his forefathers. According to the teach- 
ing of the Koran, the Jews would be con- 
demned because they rejected Christ as a 
prophet, the Christians because they adored 
Him as the Son of God. 

The intolerant tone, however, of the Ko- 
ran towards Judaism and Christianity in- 
creases very much with the gradual growth 
of Mahomet's power, and the extension of 
his views of conquest. At first the language 
is mild, almost conciliatory, and, as concerning 
the ultimate condition of the Christian, hope- 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 77 

ful : take the following as a specimen ; * Surely 
those who believe and those who Judaise, 
and Christians and Sabaeans, whoever be- 
lieveth in God and the last day, and doeth 
that which is right, shall have their reward 
with their Lord : there shall come no fear on 
them, neither shall they be grieved/ And 
yet more strongly: 'Unto every one of you 
were given a law and an open path, and if 
God had pleased, He had surely made you 
one people ; but He hath thought fit to give 
you different laws that He might try you in 
that which He hath given you respectively. 
Therefore strive to equal each other in good 
works. Unto God shall ye all return, and 
then will He declare unto you that concerning 
which ye have disagreed/ But as time goes 
on, this mild language is exchanged for stern, 
uncompromising denunciation alike of Chris- 
tian and Jew; and as the rule laid down in 
the Koran itself is that where passages are 
discordant, the later revelation abrogates the 
earlier, the moderate passages just cited must 
go for nothing. 

H* 



78 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

The references in the Koran to the life 
of our Lord exhibit a wider and wilder de- 
parture from sober history than the references 
to characters of the Old Testament. In the 
pages of the Koran the life of Jesus is dressed 
up with those fantastic and puerile stories of- 
unnecessary and unseemly wonders with 
which the Apocryphal Gospels abound, and 
which rob the character of that divine dignity 
and simplicity which in the genuine Gospels 
excite our admiration and our love. The 
events connected with the birth of John the 
Baptist are related in tolerable harmony with 
the Gospel narrative. Not so those which 
concern the birth and infancy of our blessed 
Lord. In the Koran the Angel Gabriel not 
only announces the future birth of Christ to 
the Virgin Mary, but the conception of the 
Divine Son is represented as due to his in- 
fluence. The birth of Jesus is described as 
having taken place under a palm-tree in the 
desert, w T hither his mother had wandered. 
Being nearly exhausted from want of food 
and drink, she is directed by Gabriel to shake 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 79 

the branches of the tree, whereupon ripe 
dates immediately fall from them, and a 
spring of pure water gushes forth from its 
roots. She takes the child home, who speaks 
in his cradle, and announces himself as a 
prophet of God. When older he animates a 
bird made of clay, to convince his companions 
of his prophetical destiny ; but it is expressly 
said that this and other miracles were wrought 
by the permission of God, not by his own 
power. Some hazy account of the Holy 
Eucharist which had been brought to Ma- 
homet may perhaps have given birth to the 
curious statement in the Koran, that, at the 
request of Jesus, God caused a table laden 
with provisions to descend from heaven, that 
the day of its descent might become a festi- 
val day to his disciples. The reality of the 
crucifixion is explained away by the adoption 
of the common Gnostic theory that God 
frustrated the design of the Jews by taking 
up the real Jesus into heaven, while His ene- 
mies wasted their rage upon a phantom sub- 
stituted for Him. As a consequence of this 



80 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

view, the resurrection disappears altogether 
as part of the history of our Lord and 
faith in the resurrection of all men, although 
an integral part of the Mohammedan creed, 
is not based in the Koran on the fact of a 
risen Christ, but on the power of an Almighty 
Creator to renew and revive that which He 
originally made. The miracle of recreation, 
it is remarked, is not greater than the miracle 
of creation. 

Of any notion of the Holy Spirit, not 
merely as a Person, but even as a direct in- 
fluence or energy from the Deity operating 
on man, I cannot find any trace in the 
Koran. The cold, rigid monotheism which 
Mahomet taught, did not tolerate the idea of 
such close personal communion between man 
and his Maker. The interpretation put upon 
the promise of the Paraclete in St. John 
xvi. is the most curious instance either of 
astounding ignorance or of audacious im- 
posture, to be found in the whole of the 
Koran. First, napdxhfcoc is confounded with 
TzepaZuToz, which signifies ' renowned/ or 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 8 1 

'praised ;' and then this being also the mean- 
ing of Ahmed, of which the name Mohammed 
is compounded, the passage is wrested into a 
prophecy of the coming of Mahomet. 

'Jesus, the son of Mary, said, O children 
of Israel, verily I am the Apostle of God 
sent unto you confirming the law which was 
given before me, and bringing good tidings 
of an Apostle who shall come after me, 
whose name shall be Ahmed/ There are 
some other passages more dimly alluded to 
which Mahomet or his disciples conceived to 
be prophetic of himself, and he asserted that 
the Bible had contained more, but had been 
mutilated by Jews and Christians. 

While, however, the Koran jealously 
guards the unity of the Godhead, it incul- 
cates a belief in intermediate beings, angels 
and genii, who are allowed to exercise a 
very powerful influence upon human beings. 
The angels are represented in the Koran as 
incorporeal beings created of fire, the guar- 
dians of the throne of God, the messengers 
of His will between heaven and earth. At 



82 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

the creation of man, they were bidden to 
worship Adam as the son of God. All 
obeyed excepting the devil Eblis, who was 
too proud and envious to fall down before a 
creature of clay, and became thenceforth the 
enemy of man. Further, the good angels are 
described as impeccable and immortal, of 
various orders and ranks, which are distin- 
guished by the number of their wings. To 
each man is assigned his guardian angel ; and 
two who attend him, one on either side, take 
an account of his actions good and bad which 
will be produced on the day of judgment. 
Angels take the souls of men from their 
bodies ; angels will summon men to judg- 
ment by the sound of the trumpet ; angels in- 
tercede with God for the penitent; angels will 
convey the faithful to heaven, the lost to hell, 
where they keep guard over the fallen spirits. 
The genii of the Koran are almost iden- 
tical with the daemons of the Talmud. They 
have more in common with angels than men, 
yet are inferior in several respects. Like 
angels, they are made of fire, they have 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 8$ 

wings, they roam up and down the world, 
they know future events; but they have some 
human qualities, they eat and drink, they are 
liable to human passions, and to death. 

Such is Islam, viewed as a theological 
system — a vast advance upon polytheism, 
fetichism, gross and grovelling superstition 
of any kind; but how immeasurably below 
even the Jewish revelation of the nature of 
God, and of the relation between God and 
man! It is austere, comfortless, and cold. 
The Deity is represented not indeed as a 
mere philosophical abstraction, but yet as a 
Being, remote, unapproachable in majesty 
and might, wielding at His arbitrary will the 
destinies and movements of men, yet far aloof 
from them ; a ruler of overwhelming power, 
rather than a loving and merciful, though al- 
mighty Father. There is nothing to fill up or 
bridge over the chasm which divides this tre- 
mendous Being from man; no divine Media- 
tor, no quickening illuminating Spirit; for the 
action of angels is too precarious and vague 
to fulfil these offices. Islam — resignation to 



84 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

the irresistible will and decrees of God — 
expresses very well the relation between man 
and his Maker as set forth in the Koran; the 
submission of obedient fear to a power, not 
the devotion of love to a person. The theo- 
logy, therefore, of the Koran fails to meet 
the profoundest religious needs of man ; it 
removes the Creator to an immeasurable 
distance from the creatures whom He has 
made, and in the renunciation of all idea of 
mediation it falls infinitely below not Juda- 
ism only but Magianism and Brahmanism, 
which in other respects it excels. All that is 
good and true in the Koran concerning the 
nature of God, and worthy of the subject, 
is to be found in the Bible, if it be not bor- 
rowed from the Bible ; all that is original 
is good for nothing, if indeed there be any- 
thing purely original, for probably most of 
the wilder statements could be traced to 
traditional sources. The genius, indeed, of 
Mahomet as the founder of a theological 
system consisted, not so much in inventing 
or devising anything actually new, as in 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 85 

piecing together fragments of other creeds, 
and by his commanding personal influence, 
tact, enthusiasm, and self-confidence, impos- 
ing this patchwork system successfully on 
so large a number of his fellow-country- 
men. In itself, the Koran is a clumsy pro- 
duction. To suppose that an angel was sent 
from heaven to reveal the truths which it 
contains, would be unnecessary, for those 
truths are to be found more amply, more 
beautifully expressed elsewhere ; to suppose 
that Gabriel was sent from heaven to reveal 
the childish absurdities which it contains, 
would be an insult to the character and work 
of angels. 

It remains to consider briefly the teaching 
of the Koran concerning a future state. It 
may truly be said that if the lofty, though 
cold, conception of the Deity be the highest 
point in the teaching of Islam, its doctrine of 
a future state stands on the lowest level. It 
is, indeed, not raised much above the belief 
which has prevailed among many heathen 
nations. As the wild Indian imagines that 



86 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

the joy of the future life will consist in rang- 
ing over well stocked hunting grounds with 
the bow and the dog, which have been his 
companions in the chase on earth ; as our 
Teutonic forefathers, ere their conversion to 
Christianity, looked forward to banquets in 
the drinking halls of Odin, as the height of 
celestial bliss ; so did the Arab, instructed 
by the Koran, anticipate that the joys of Pa- 
radise would be of that sensuous and volup- 
tuous nature which to his temperament were 
most alluring. * Verdant gardens watered 
by clear and unfailing streams, rivers of milk 
the taste whereof changed not, rivers of wine 
pleasant to them that drink, rivers of clarified 
honey, perpetual shade from trees ever laden 
with the most delicious fruits ;' these are 
the things which make up the scenery of the 
Mohammedan Paradise. Here the faithful 
arrayed in costly raiment of silk, and adorned 
with bracelets of gold and pearls, should re- 
pose on soft couches, attended by dark eyed 
damsels of immortal youthfulness and super- 
human beauty. Life in Paradise, in short, is 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 87 

made up of the most earthly sensual enjoy- 
ments, only magnified and intensified to a 
degree never experienced on earth, and 
which if they ever could be experienced, must 
soon cloy the appetite of the most insatiable 
Arab that ever lived. Of God there is no 
mention in these descriptions, nor, indeed, is it 
easy to see how the Divine Being could with 
decency be introduced into them. There are 
indeed, occasional hints of a beatific vision of 
the Deity to be enjoyed by the holiest of the 
faithful, but they are rare and dim compared 
with the frequent and glowing pictures of 
more material and corporeal delights. The 
pains of hell are, in their grossness, a fitting 
counterpart to the pleasures of Paradise. 
One quotation will suffice: 'They who be- 
lieve not shall have garments of fire fitted 
to them ; boiling water shall be poured upon 
their heads ; their bowels and also their skins 
shall be dissolved thereby, and they shall be 
beaten with maces of iron. So often as they 
shall endeavour to get out of hell because of 
the anguish of their torments, they shall be 



88 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

dragged back into the same, and their tor- 
mentors shall say unto them, taste ye the 
pain of burning/ 

In the description of the resurrection, and 
of the day of judgment, some of the Scrip- 
tural doctrine is reproduced ; the archangel's 
trumpet, the darkening of the sun, the shak- 
ing of the earth, the reeling of the mountains, 
the shrivelling together of the heavens like a 
parched scroll ; but all these are strangely 
jumbled with the wildest and most fantasti- 
cal imaginations. 

In all these descriptions of the resurrec- 
tion, the judgment, and the future life, in addi- 
tion to their intrinsic materiality and coarseness, 
we see the culminating example of a weak- 
ness which pervades the whole of the Koran, 
and perhaps more than anything else betrays 
its human origin. I mean the attempt to bring 
down the most inscrutable mysteries to the 
level of the human understanding. The mi- 
nute circumstantial descriptions of holy places 
where angels would fear to tread, and of holy 
places before whom they would veil their 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 89 

faces, savours of a thoroughly human curiosity 
which imagines or invents where it cannot 
discover. They are in direct contradiction to 
the teaching of Holy Scripture, 'eye hath not 
seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into 
the heart of man to conceive the things which 
God hath prepared for them that love Him/ 
The reticence and reserve of the Bible con- 
cerning many subjects which most excite 
human curiosity is surely of some value in 
evidence that the origin of the sacred volume 
is not human, but divine. With that partial 
knowledge of the future state which the 
Gospel vouchsafes to us, the wise Christian is 
content. To know that 'God hath prepared 
for them that love Him such good things as 
pass man's understanding ;' to know that 
though there be a veil between us and the 
other world, and 'that it doth not yet appear 
what we shall be/ yet if 'we purify ourselves 
even as Christ is pure, we shall be like Him, 
for we shall see Him as He is/ to know that 
the body of our humiliation, the body of this 

present fallen nature, liable to sin, to disease 

i* 



90 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

to death, shall be changed so as to be 
fashioned according to the body of Christ's 
glorified state ; such knowledge, surely, is 
enough to be thankful for, enough to live by. 
Such knowledge is a revelation of truths 
which we could not have certainly discovered 
for ourselves, a revelation which discloses 
light sufficient to guide and cheer us as we 
plod along the dark and slippery ways of 
this world's night, while the greater light, 
which would now only dazzle and bewilder, 
is held back until the day comes, when the 
shadows shall flee away and we shall 'know 
even as we are known/ 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 9 1 



LECTURE III. 

MORAL TEACHING OF THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN 
CONTRASTED. 

1 Allahu Akbar ! Prayer is better than sleep ! O Thou 
bountiful One, Thy mercy ceases not! My sins are great: 
greater is thy mercy ! I extol His perfection ! Allahu Akbar.' 
— The Mohammedan Call to Prayer. 

The apostolic mission of Mahomet having 
been once acknowledged, it was natural that 
he should undertake the regulation, not only 
of the creed but also of the moral practice 
and ceremonial worship of his countrymen. 
The Koran consequently became the ethical 
digest, the civil code, the ceremonial hand- 
book, as well as the theological oracle of 
his disciples. And it is obvious that if Ma- 
homet's aim was to remodel the national 
life, the most effectual way of attaining it, 



92 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN, 

his prophetic authority once established, was 
to frame a number of positive precepts touch- 
ing every department of moral conduct. A 
peculiar character is by this method quickly 
but forcibly stamped upon the recipients. 
They become ' new creatures/ with new 
motives, and new purposes. They are ca- 
pable of being conducted by their ruler to 
definite ends, because their movements are 
under control, because the people are more 
like a disciplined army, than are a people 
to whom greater freedom of thought and ac- 
tion is allowed. Nothing less than the impo- 
sition of a minute code of rules for practical 
life could have enabled Benedict, or Francis 
of Assissi, or Dominic, or Ignatius Loyola 
to fix such a distinct and lasting character 
upon the great religious orders which they 
created. 

It was by their subjection to a system of 
positive precepts, moulding and regulating 
every department of life, that the Israelites, 
after their emancipation from Egypt, were 
trained for that peculiar position among the 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 93 

nations of the world which it was God's pur- 
pose to give them. Their long servitude in 
Egypt had crushed their spirit of independ- 
ence and self-respect, had lowered their moral 
standard, and corrupted the pure faith of 
their forefathers. Nothing less than a strin- 
gent minute set of practical laws could have 
transformed them from a rabble of abject and 
superstitious slaves into a brave, God-fear- 
ing, God-loving host of free men. Such a 
code was given to them in the hands of their 
mediator, Moses ; it became to them, what 
the Koran has become to the Mussulman, 
the theological, moral, ceremonial, and civil 
code, all in one ; it taught them what to be- 
lieve, how to worship, how to live. Having 
been converted, under the influence of their 
heaven-sent law, into a valorous and puis- 
sant people, they took forcible possession of 
the land of Canaan ; and the promise made 
ages before to their ancestors Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob, was at last fulfilled. 

Thus far there certainly seems some ana- 
logy between the effects of the law given 



94 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

to the Jews from God, as they believed, 
through Moses, and the effects of the law 
given to the Arabs from God, as they no 
less believed, through Mahomet. The aim 
of Mahomet was to revive among his coun- 
trymen the Arabs, as Moses revived among, 
his countrymen the Jews, the pure faith of 
their common forefather Abraham. In this 
he succeeded to a very great extent. For a 
confused heap of idolatrous superstitions he 
substituted a pure monotheistic faith he 
abolished some of the most vicious practices 
of his countrymen, modified others ; he gen- 
erally raised the moral standard, improved 
the social condition of the people, and intro- 
duced a sober and rational ceremonial in 
worship. Finally he welded by this means a 
number of wild independent tribes, mere 
floating atoms, into a compact body politic, 
as well prepared and as eager to subdue the 
kingdoms of the world to their rule and to 
their faith, as ever the Israelites had been to 
conquer the land of Canaan. 

But the danger of a precise system of 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 95 

positive precepts regulating in minute detail 
the ceremonial of worship, and the moral and 
social relations of life, is that it should retain 
too tight a grip upon men when the circum- 
stances which justified it have changed or 
vanished away; that the movements as it 
were of full-grown men should be impeded 
and cramped by garments fitted only for 
children ; or to speak more correctly, per- 
haps, that the moral growth of those who 
live under such a minute system of restraints 
should be stunted and retarded. Amongst 
the Jews there was a provision made against 
this danger. It was one peculiar part of the 
mission of the Prophets to counteract that 
tendency to narrowness, formality, and hard- 
ness, which w r as the consequence of living 
under a rigid system of positive precepts. 
They kindled the spirit of worship and of 
morality, as opposed to the letter ; they pre- 
pared the way for the purer, loftier, more 
free dispensation of the Gospel. The earlier 
system of exact and positive law r s had been 
necessary, first to transform the character of 



96 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

the people, and then to maintain it ; first to 
mark them off from all other nations as God's 
chosen, peculiar possession, and then to fence 
them round and preserve their creed and 
morals intact, and undefiled by the mass of 
heathenism which surrounded them. BuJ: 
lest they should confound virtue as identical 
with obedience to the outward requirements 
of the law, the voices of the Prophets were 
ever and anon lifted up to declare that a 
strict conformity to practical precepts, whether 
of conduct or ceremonial, would not extenu- 
ate, but rather increase, in the eyes of God 
the guilt of an unpurified heart and an un- 
holy life. 

To what purpose is the multitude of 
your sacrifices unto me ? Bring no more 
vain oblations ; incense is an abomination 
unto me ; the new moons and sabbaths, the 
calling of assemblies, I cannot away with : it 

is iniquity, even the solemn meeting 

Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil 
of your doings from before mine eyes; cease 
to do evil, learn to do well ; seek judgment, 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 97 

relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, 
plead for the widow/ It would be unneces- 
sary to multiply citations of similar passages, 
which are familiar to us all. They are all 
anticipations of the moral teaching of Him 
who pronounced woe on those hypocrites 
that paid tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, 
but omitted the weightier matters of the law, 
judgment, mercy, and faith. 

It is 'obvious to any reader of the Koran 
that it does not contain, except perhaps in a 
few stray passages, any teachings analogous 
to the moral teaching of the Hebrew Prophets 
w r hich might act as a corrective to the cramp- 
ing and hardening influence of its positive 
precepts. Nor has any school of teachers 
arisen in Islam who have made it their aim 
to accomplish this salutary object. There 
have been Scribes (and probably Pharisees) 
in abundance, but no Prophets. 

In the reformation which Mahomet ef- 
fected among the x^rabs, by persuading them 
to adopt as of divine institution a set of 
theological doctrines and moral precepts, it 



98 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

has been admitted that there seems some 
analogy to the reformation effected among 
the Israelites by Moses. It has often been 
considered that in the propagation of the 
creed of Mahomet by the sword, there is a 
further parallel to the forcible occupation of 
the land of Canaan by the Jews. There are 
critics who will compare the extermination or 
subjugation of the inhabitants of conquered 
territory alike by Mahomet and Joshua, and 
maintain that it is equally difficult to recon- 
cile either with sound principles of morality. 
The supposed analogy, however, breaks 
down upon examination, and the case turns 
out to be one, not for comparison, but con- 
trast. In the Koran, the Mussulman is abso- 
lutely and positively commanded to make 
war upon all those who decline to acknowledge 
the prophet until they submit, or, in the case of 
Jews and Christians, purchase exemption from 
conformity by the payment of tribute. The 
mission of the Mussulman, as declared in the 
Koran, is distinctly aggressive. We might 
say that Mahomet bequeathed to his disciples 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 99 

a roving commission to propagate his faith 
by the employment of force where persuasion 
failed. ' O prophet, fight for the religion of 
God ' — ' Stir up the faithful to war/ such are 
commands which Mahomet believed to be 
given him by God. ' Fight against them who 
believe not in God nor the last day/ ' attack 
the idolatrous in all the months/ such are his 
own exhortations to his disciples. 

We need hardly stop to point out that 
such a charge is diametrically opposite to the 
commission of Christ to His Apostles, who 
were commanded to preach the Gospel to 
every creature, but were expressly forbidden 
to support their preaching by carnal weapons. 
It is more important to show that the Jews 
had no roving commission to go about the 
world making proselytes, and presenting the 
alternatives of tribute or the sword to such 
as would not accept their creed. They were 
commanded to take possession of only a 
narrow strip of land, promised ages before to 
their ancestors, to extirpate the inhabitants 
on account of their singular wickedness, and 



IOO THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

then to keep themselves aloof from their 
neighbours in order that the light of a pure 
monotheistic faith might be maintained burn- 
ing undimmed amidst the darkness of sur- 
rounding heathenism. Again and again the 
people are reminded that the land is given 
them as a step towards the fulfilment of the 
promise made by God to their forefathers, 
that through their seed all nations of the 
earth should in the ages to come be blessed ; 
again and again they are instructed that in 
destroying or expelling the inhabitants they 
were only instruments used for the removal 
of wickedness instead of some inanimate force, 
such as earthquake, or plague, or the fire 
which consumed Sodom and Gomorrah, ' Un- 
derstand this day that the Lord thy God is 
He which goeth over before thee ; as a con- 
suming fire shall He destroy them, and bring 

them down before thy face Speak not 

thou in thine heart after that the Lord thy 
God hath cast them ou,t from before thee, 
saying, for my righteousness the Lord hath 
brought me in to possess this land Not 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. IOI 

for thy righteousness or for the uprightness 
of thine heart dost thou go to possess their 
land ; but for the wickedness of these nations 
the Lord thy God doth drive them out from 
before thee, and that He may perform the word 
which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, Abra- 
ham, Lsaac, and Jacob' (Deut. ix. 3-5). The 
two purposes for which the Jews were per- 
mitted to take forcible possession of Canaan 
are here distinctly stated: the immediate pur- 
pose was the expulsion of wickedness; the 
ultimate far reaching purpose was, retrospec- 
tively, the fulfilment of the promise made to 
their forefathers ; prospectively, as a part or 
consequence of this fulfilment, the bestowal 
of a blessing on all families of the earth. 
Meanwhile the Jews, having been once estab- 
lished in their country, were to abstain from 
aggression upon surrounding nations, and as 
far as possible from intercourse with them. 
They were to act on the defensive, to keep 
themselves separate and undefiled ; not to 
compel others to accept their faith, but to 
wait patiently God's own time, and God's own 



102 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

way of extending it. In the Book of Deu- 
teronomy (xvii.) there are some principles 
laid down for regulating the character and 
conduct of kings who might in future be ap- 
pointed. They all aim at repressing the ac- 
quisition of military power, the display of 
military pomp, the indulgence in luxury, and 
the accumulation of riches to which the Orien- 
tal despots of the world were addicted. The 
Jewish king was not to multiply horses to 
himself, or wives or silver and gold. The ca- 
reer of Solomon was in direct disobedience 
to these commands, and initiated a disastrous 
policy of worldly greatness- and ambition in 
his successors, which ended in the overthrow 
of the Empire. In the Koran, on the other 
hand, there is no such condemnation of these 
elements of earthly luxury and ostentation, 
and the later caliphs certainly indulged in 
them to their hearts' content. 

The latitude of toleration allowed to the 
Jews towards nations alien in creed or birth, 
or both, was as great as possible compatibly 
with the necessity of keeping the chosen 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. IO3 

nation free from contamination ; and much 
greater than many from a superficial view of 
the Jewish position are apt to imagine. 
* Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, for he is 
thy brother ; thou shalt not abhor an Egyp- 
tian, because thou wast a stranger in his land. 1 
Edomite or Egyptian children of the third 
generation were to be admitted as members 
of the congregation (Deut. xxiii. 7, 8). The 
league of peace made with the Gibeonites 
was to be observed forever, notwithstanding 
they hadobtained it by a fraudulent artifice. 
This scrupulous adherence to a pledge once 
given, this 'swearing to a neighbour, and dis- 
appointing him not, though it were to their 
own hindrance/ presents a striking contrast 
to the acts of treachery which were not only 
connived at by Mahomet, but in some cases 
expressly sanctioned. 

Nothing, again, is more continually and 
solemnly reiterated in the pages of the Pen- 
tateuch than the duty of showing kindness to 
strangers. The command is always based 
upon a touching appeal to the recollection of 



104 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

their own former condition as strangers and 
sojourners in Egypt. 'Thou shalt not op- 
press a stranger, for ye know the heart of a 
stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land 
of Egypt/ ' Thou shalt neither vex a stranger 
nor oppress him, seeing ye were strangers in 
the land of Egypt/ The Koran also enjoins 
repeatedly and in very emphatic language the 
duty of showing kindness to the stranger and 
the orphan, and of treating slaves, if converted 
to the faith, with the consideration and respect 
due to believers. The duty even of mercy 
to the lower animals is not forgotten, and it 
is to be thankfully acknowledged that Moham- 
medanism as well as Buddhism shares with 
Christianity the honour of having given birth 
to Hospitals and Asylums for the insane and 
sick. But ardent admirers of Islam are so 
much captivated by these laudable traits that 
they sometimes unduly magnify them, and 
underrate the teachings of the Bible in refer- 
ence to the same subjects. To take the case 
of slavery, for instance ; persons filled with 
admiration of the humane treatment of the 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. I05 

slave inculcated in the Koran, and as a rule 
practised in Mohammedan countries, are apt 
to forget that slavery after all is distinctly re- 
cognized by the Koran as an integral part of 
the social system; that the Mohammedan slave 
could not look forward like the Hebrew to his 
release in the seventh year ; and that, while 
the Koran enjoins kindness in general terms, 
there are not such often repeated and touch- 
ing warnings as we find in the Pentateuch 
against oppression of slaves and hired ser- 
vants, not such distinct and minute provisions 
for their happiness and welfare. 4 Thou shalt 
not oppress an hired servant that is poor and 
needy, whether he be of thy brethren or of 
thy strangers that are in thy land within thy 
gates : at his day thou shalt give him his hire, 
neither shall the sun go down upon it, for he 
is poor and setteth his heart upon it ... . 
thou shalt remember that thou wast a bond- 
man in Egypt, and the Lord thy God re- 
deemed thee thence.' If a master struck a 
slave so as to cause the loss of an eye or a 
tooth, the slave was to go free for his eye's 



106 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

sake, or his tooth's sake ; if he caused his 
death, the master was to be punished. When 
the slave was released in the seventh year, 
his wife and children accompanied him unless 
the wife had been given him by his master. 
In that case, and in that case only, the master 
could retain her (Exod. xxi. 1 ) The run- 
away slave was not to be restored to his 
master. 'Thou shalt not deliver unto his 
master the servant which is escaped from his 
master unto thee : he shall dwell with thee 
in that place which he shall choose in one of 
thy gates where it liketh him best: thou shalt 
not oppress him' (Deut. xxiii. 15). 

By such like enactments did the law of 
Moses mitigate the condition of slavery. The 
Gospel has done more. It did not violently 
interfere with any of the existing social or 
political institutions amongst which it arose ; 
it accepted them, it made the best of them. 
It did not preach rebellion against the slave- 

1 Mr. Bosworth Smith's references to the Pentateuch on this 
subject are defective and one-sided 'Lectures on Mohammedanism/ 

(P. 245.) 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. I07 

owner, or the despot; but it was ever slowly 
yet surely sapping the despotism alike of the 
slave-owner and the political tyrant at its 
roots by proclaiming principles of justice and 
mercy, and infusing a spirit of brotherhood, 
which were inconsistent with oppression in any 
form. The conduct of St. Paul towards the 
slave Onesimus and his master Philemon is a 
typical illustration of the general attitude of 
Christianity towards the institution of slavery 
as a. whole. He sends back the fugitive, but 
requests Philemon that he may be received, 
not as a slave, but as a brother beloved; be- 
cause like the master he had become a Chris- 
tian, was a member of the same spiritual 
family, an inheritor of the same Heavenly 
kingdom (Philem. 16). 

To pass from the treatment of slaves to 
the treatment of enemies, ' Islam, tribute, or 
the sword/ is the well-known formula w T hich 
sums up the teaching of the Koran concern- 
ing this matter. 'When ye encounter the un- 
believers, strike off their heads until ye have 
made a great slaughter among them ; and 



108 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

bind them in bonds, and either give them a 
free dismission afterwards or exact a ransom 
until the war shall have laid down its arms/ 
This is mild compared with many other pas- 
sages where the alternative of release is not 
suggested. The Israelites, as was observed 
just now, were to abstain from aggression, 
except upon the inhabitants of that land in 
which they were to act as God's instruments 
for the extirpation of wickedness. The cap- 
ture of towns in Canaan, therefore, but in 
Canaan only, was to be followed by complete 
destruction of all that breathed therein. If 
forced into war with more distant countries, 
when the Jewish army came before a city 
peace was to be proclaimed. If this was not 
accepted and the city was besieged and cap- 
tured, the men only were to be put to the 
sword ; the women and children were to be 
saved alive (Deut. xx.). Under the Mosaic 
law women taken captive in war were not to 
be degraded to the condition of slave concu- 
bines. If a man wished to make one his 
wife, she had first to go through a kind of 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. IO9 

religious ceremonial of purification, and then 
she was allowed a month of mourning for her 
old home before she was married. If the 
husband afterwards wished to put her aw r ay, 
she was free to go wherever she pleased; the 
man was not to sell her or in any way to 
make merchandise of her (Deut. xxi.) . These 
provisions for the honor of female captives 
form a striking- contrast to the law of the 
Koran, which, while it endeavours to alleviate 
the evils of polygamy by restricting the num- 
ber of a man's wives to four, places no limit 
whatever to the number of his concubines, 
and makes no provision for the mitigation of 
their unhappy lot. 

Of course we do not forget that the regu- 
lations of the Pentateuch concerning war 
were frequently violated, like many other 
particulars of the moral law ; yet the deeds of 
the most merciless kings of Israel and Judah 
will hardly offer a parallel to one act of bar- 
barous cruelty approved, if not actually or- 
dered, by Mahomet. Omm Kirfa, an aged 
woman, chieftainess of a tribe which had 

L 



HO THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

molested and plundered the caravans of the 
faithful, having been made captive, was tied 
by the legs to two camels, which were then 
driven in opposite directions, so that her body 
was literally torn asunder. I am not aware 
that the exploits even of modern Bashi Ba- 
zouks and Circassians can rival such an 'atro- 
city ' as this, committed under the sanction 
of the founder of Islam. If it be scornfully 
observed that things as horrible have been 
done by men bearing the name of Christians, 
and sometimes professedly in the name of 
Christianity, we of course admit what every 
Christian with shame and sorrow must con- 
fess. Only such alleged parallels prove no- 
thing. The ' tu quoque ' argument is always 
a poor one, and in this instance it is peculiarly 
unfortunate. Wars undertaken in the name 
of religion by Christians are in direct dis- 
obedience both to the spirit and letter of the 
Gospel ; whereas religious wars undertaken 
by Mohammedans are in conformity w r ith the 
practice and precept of the founder of their 
religion. Christianity, therefore, cannot be 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. Ill 

made in any way chargeable with cruelties 
committed in wars which are themselves in 
contravention of the command of Christ. 
That men have (sometimes with a sincere 
zeal for God only not according to knowledge) 
attempted to propagate the Christian faith by 
war with its concomitant horrors in direct 
disobedience to the command of Christ, does 
not improve the position of the Mussulman 
when he propagates his creed by war in 
direct obedience to the command of Mahomet. 
One more illustration may suffice to close 
the contrast between the Pentateuch and the 
Koran respecting the conduct of war. In 
the book of Deuteronomy the destruction of 
such trees in an enemy's country as bore 
edible fruit is expressly forbidden : ' Thou 
shalt not cut them down to employ them in 
the siege, for the tree of the field is man's life.' 
On one occasion when some palm trees (one 
of the principal sources of food to the Arab) 
were an impediment to some military opera- 
tion of the prophet, he produced a special 
revelation authorizing their removal. 'What 



I I 2 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

palm trees ye cut down or left standing were 
so cut down or left standing by the will of 
God, that He might disgrace the evil doers/ 
The vices most prevalent in Arabia in 
the time of Mahomet which are most sternly 
denounced and absolutely forbidden in the 
Koran were drunkenness, unlimited concu- 
binage and polygamy, the destruction of 
female infants, reckless gambling, extortion- 
ate usury, superstitious arts of divination and 
magic. The abolition of some of these evil 
customs, and the mitigation of others, was a 
gread advance in the morality of the Arabs, 
and is a wonderful and honourable testimony 
to the zeal and influence of the reformer. The 
total suppression of female infanticide and of 
drunkenness is the most signal triumph of his 
work ; yet it may be observed that the ex- 
cesses of cruelty and licentiousness of which 
Mohammedans can be guilty, notwithstanding 
abstinence from wine, proves that total absti- 
nence from one evil thing is not in itself sogood 
a security for virtue as the Christian principle 
of soberness and temperance in all things. 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 113 

The condition of women in Arabia seems 
to have been improved in three ways by the 
provisions of the Koran. The transmission 
of a man's wives to his heir as part of his 
property, like his furniture or any other 
household chattel, was forbidden. The riaht 
of a woman to a share in her father's or hus- 
band's property was declared, and, as already 
stated, the legal number of wives for any one 
man was limited to four. Mahomet himself 
was exempted from this restriction by a spe- 
cial revelation in his favour. Under the 
Jewish law, polygamy was tolerated ; but it 
was not distinctly sanctioned, as it is in the 
Koran, by the definition of a fixed allowable 
number of wives, and therefore no impedi- 
ment was placed in the way of the ultimate re- 
moval of the system by the gradual growth of 
purer and truer views respecting the married 
state and the position of women in society. 

The laws respecting divorce in the Koran 
are vile, and reveal the condition of the wife 
as suffering under the extreme degradation 
and servitude common in all Oriental coun- 

L* 



114 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

tries. The husband might put away his wife 
and take- her back again at pleasure; but if 
divorce had been thrice repeated she could 
not return to her husband except on one re- 
volting condition, that she should first be mar- 
ried to another man and live with him for one 
whole day and night. We read of one fol- 
lower of the prophet who had offspring by 
sixteen wives. As he could not have pos- 
sessed more than four at any one time, his 
case is a remarkable illustration of the facility 
of divorce. With these abominable customs 
contrast the command in Deuteronomy (xxiv. 
4), which expressly forbids a man to take 
back a wife who has been once divorced and 
married to another. In Deuteronomy, again 
(xxi.), we find a law directed against the ef- 
fects of that favouritism and jealousy which 
are among the many banes and curses of 
polygamy. * If a man have two wives, one 
beloved and the other hated, and they have 
borne him children, both the beloved and 
hated, and if the first born son be hers that 
was hated; then it shall be when he maketh 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. II5 

his sons to inherit that which he hath, that 
he may not make the son of the beloved first 
born before the son of the hated, but he shall 
acknowledge the son of the hated for the first 
born by giving him a double portion of all 
that he hath: the right of the first born is 
his/ 

The exhortations to almsgiving as a 
solemn duty commanded by God and owed 
to man are, as is well known, very numerous 
in the Koran. It is perhaps the point on 
which the teaching of the Koran may most 
fairly be compared with the teaching of the 
Pentateuch, yet there are not such careful and 
particular instructions in the Koran as in the 
Pentateuch for ministering to the necessities 
of the ' stranger, the fatherless, and the 
widow/ The certainty of a rich reward in 
the life to come to those who bestow alms is 
promised in the Koran in terms which sound 
rather like a bribe to benevolence, and which 
might not improbably foster pride in the 
almsgiver. Future punishment is predicted 
with equal positiveness on those who should 



Il6 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

neglect the duty. * Unto such as believe and 
bestow alms shall be given a great reward/ 
but he who did not pay his legal contribution 
of alms would have a serpent twisted about 
his neck on the day of resurrection. 

The duties of prayer and fasting are in- 
culcated in the Koran as co-ordinate with the 
duty of almsgiving; and the punctual and 
scrupulous observance by the Mussulman of 
the appointed hours of prayer, and the ap- 
pointed season of fasting, is notorious and 
edifying. According to the traditional ac- 
count of Mahomet's nocturnal journey to the 
seventh Heaven, he was commanded by the 
Almighty to impose on his disciples the obli- 
gation of saying prayers fifty times a day. 
By the advice of Moses, he supplicated and 
obtained a mitigation of this intolerable 
burden, and the number was gradually re- 
duced to five. The observance of these 
hours was indispensable. The prayers might 
be shortened on the march or in the camp, 
when some emergency demanded action with- 
out delay ; but the omissions were to be made 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. II J 

up afterwards when the pressure of danger 
or haste was at an end. Cleanliness was 
designated by Mahomet as the key of prayer, 
even as prayer was the gate of Paradise ; 
and accordingly his disciples were forbidden 
to enter on their devotions without having 
washed the face, hands, and feet. In the 
absence or scarcity of water, the believer is 
by a special permission in the Koran to use 
sand as a substitute. 

In the beginning of his career, when he 
was cultivating friendly relations with the 
Jews, Mahomet instructed his disciples to 
turn their faces, when they prayed, towards 
Jerusalem; but after all hopes of conciliating 
the Jews were at an end, Mecca was estab- 
lished as the Holy City, the centre of attrac- 
tion to which the eyes and thoughts of the 
faithful worshipper w r ere to be directed. The 
temple indeed at Mecca, the Kaaba, was 
considered by Mahomet, in common with 
the rest of his countrymen, as far exceeding 
Jerusalem in antiquity and sanctity as a spot 
consecrated to pure worship. It was sup- 



Il8 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

posed to be almost coeval with the world. 
The original having been destroyed by the 
deluge, the temple was rebuilt, according to 
Arabian tradition, by Abraham and Ishmael; 
but the black stone was venerated as a gen- 
uine relic of the primaeval building, having 
been let down, it was said, by God to earth 
at the request of Adam, after his expulsion 
from Paradise. The duty of visiting this 
holy place is urged in the Koran with no 
less frequency and solemnity than the duties 
of almsgiving and prayer. Every Moham- 
medan, as he values the prospect of happi- 
ness in the life to come, is bound to make 
the pilgrimage once, at least, in his lifetime, 
and those who are able should make it every 
year in the appointed month. If prevented 
by sickness or any other pressing necessity, 
the omission was suffered to be redeemed by 
offerings and a ten days' fast. 

The Koran prescribes that one month in 
the year, the month Ramadan, should be 
observed as a very strict fast. From sunrise 
to sunset, neither food nor drink must pass 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. II9 

the lips, but after sunset the natural appetites 
may be moderately gratified. As the Arabian 
year is lunar, each month in the course of 
thirty-three years runs through all the differ- 
ent seasons. Consequently when the month 
Ramadan falls in the middle of the summer, 
the length of the days and the severity of the 
heat cause such vigorous abstinence from 
sunrise to sunset to be extremely mortifying. 

We have now touched upon the main 
precepts, ethical and ceremonial, contained 
in the Koran. The following passage is per- 
haps the best summary of the moral teaching 
which could be picked out of the whole book, 
especially showing that Mahomet himself 
did not value ceremonial unless it was at- 
tended by that real devotion on the part of 
the worshipper which all ceremonial is in- 
tended to express : 

' There is no piety in turning your faces 
towards the east or the west ; but he is pious 
who believeth in God, and the Last Day, and 
the Angels and the Scriptures and the Pro- 
phets, who for the love of God dispenses his 



120 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

wealth to his kinsfolk, to the orphans, and to 
the needy, and the wayfarer, and to those 
who ask, and for ransoming, who observeth 
prayer, and payeth the legal alms, and who 
belongs to them that are faithful to their en- 
gagements, when they have engaged in then), 
and are patient under ills and hardships and 
in time of trouble ; these are they who are 
just and those who fear the Lord/ 

We get here a taste, a gleam, of that 
higher and more spiritual moral teaching 
which, as was pointed out at the beginning of 
this lecture, is the most salutary counterpoise 
to the stiffness and hardness of bare ethical 
precepts and ceremonial regulations, and to 
their tendency to contract men's notions of 
morality. Yet if all the sublime teaching of 
the Hebrew Prophets did not suffice to 
rescue the Jews from formalism, if our Lord 
had to denounce pretentious prayer-making, 
ostentatious almsgiving, superstitious ablu- 
tions, an inordinate veneration of Jerusalem 
and the Temple as the only spots where 
prayer would be acceptable, it is impossible 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 121 

to forbear thinking that the minute directions 
of the Koran concerning the times and places 
of prayers, and fasting, and pilgrimage, con- 
cerning the amount of almsgiving, and its 
consequent reward, must be perilous to the 
preservation of a large-minded, large-hearted 
piety. The tendency of the human heart 
to self-deceit and formalism is so strong that 
when men are tied down to the performance 
of certain religious functions, minutely and 
precisely fixed in respect to time and manner, 
so that neither less nor more is required of 
them, they will very commonly (though per- 
haps often unconsciously to themselves) fall 
into the error of imagining that there is a 
peculiar intrinsic merit and virtue in the mere 
discharge of those duties. Morality is viewed 
not in the abstract, but in the concrete, as 
consisting in a bundle of religious obser- 
vances rather than in a certain disposition 
of the heart towards God and man. 

Thus, in contrasting the moral teaching of 
the Koran with the moral teaching of the Old 
Testament, and still more of the New Testa- 

M 



122 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

ment, the point which cannot fail to strike 
the careful student is this, that it deals much 
more with sin and virtue in fragmentary 
detail than as wholes. It deals with acts 
more than principles, with outward practice 
more than inward motives, with precept and 
command more than exhortation. For in- 
stance, there are commands to give full 
measure, to weigh with a just balance, to 
abstain from wine and gambling, to treat 
certain persons with kindness ; but on the 
graces of truth and honesty, of temperance 
and mercy, as principles of wide application, 
the Koran does not dwell. I have failed to 
discover a single passage which touches on 
the virtue of meekness properly so called. 
Patience is inculcated, but chiefly as a condi- 
tion of success in propagating the faith of 
Islam; for unless the believer was patient 
under insult and adversity, the cause of his 
religion might be injured by the provocation 
of an attack. 1 

1 It is, however, only fair to give a specimen, which may 
be a sample of many more like it, of the check which reve- 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 1 23 

Nowhere in the Koran, as in the Bible, is 
sin set forth as the subtle leaven, the moral 
disease, pervading and corrupting human 
nature, as the evil principle of which all par- 
ticular forms of wickedness are the outcome. 
The Koran prescribes the practice of certain 
virtues, and condemns the practice of certain 
vices ; it encourages by promising rewards, 
it deters by threatening punishment ; but it 
does not hold up before man the hatefulness 
and ugliness of all sin as a whole. It does 
not depict vividly and forcibly the sinful- 
ness of his fallen nature and of the im- 
possibility of his really cleansing himself in 
the sight of God. Of the need of propitia- 
tion for daily and inevitable transgressions, 
there is not a word. This places at once a 

rence for the precepts of the Koran could place upon angry pas- 
sions. As one of the sons of Ali, Mahomet's nephew, was 
dining, a slave dropped, by accident a dish of scalding broth 
upon him. The poor creature fell prostrate before his master, 
and, to deprecate his rage, repeated a verse from the Koran : 
■ Paradise is for those who command their anger ;' ' I- am not 
angry/ was the reply. <And for those who pardon offences ;> I 
pardon your offence.' 'And for those who return good for 
evil;' <I give you your liberty and four hundred pieces of 
silver.' 



124 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

vast interval between the standpoint of the 
Mohammedan and the Jewish religions. The 
essence of the Biblical ethics is the insuffi- 
ciency of man to fulfil the divine law of 
righteousness, the hopelessness of his obtain- 
. ing the favour of God, or opening the gates 
of Heaven by the strength of his own merits. 
The necessity, therefore, of propitiation and 
atonement runs through the teaching of the 
Bible from beginning to end. Every offering 
under the Jewish Law was an acknowledg- 
ment of the offerer's inability to meet God's 
demands ; it was a cry for mercy. All the 
offerings were summed up and completely 
discharged for man in the Life crowned by 
the Death of Jesus Christ ; and the attitude 
of the Christian towards God is that of hu- 
mility and hope, his moral motive is grati- 
tude and love. The moral motive of Islam is 
a solemn sense of the duty of obedience and 
submission to an Almighty Ruler; whereas 
the moral motive of Christianity is love to 
an Almighty Father, an all-sympathising Re- 
deemer, Brother, and Friend. 



THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 1 25 

The moral teaching of the Koran, put 
into a few words, seems to amount to this : 
1 Obey these rules for moral conduct, and 
conform to this prescribed ceremonial in 
worship, because they are commanded by 
God and His prophet, and you will be re- 
warded with everlasting bliss in the life to 
come; 1 disobey them, and you will be re- 
warded with everlasting torment/ Such a ' 
system is not calculated to inspire hope in the 
sinner, or to foster humility in the righteous, 
and is, to say the least, not unlikely to gender 
the delusion that the whole of practical mo- 
rality and piety is enclosed within the nar- 
row compass of a fixed number of precepts. 
There is no foundation laid in the Koran for 
that far-reaching charity which, under the 
Gospel regards all men as equal in the sight 
of God, and recognises no distinctions into 
races and classes ; there is no foundation for 

1 Not, indeed, because you deserve it. Mahomet is care- 
ful to say that future bliss is the gift of God's mercy ; but yet it is 
as confidently asserted that this gift will follow the discharge 
of certain prescribed duties, as if it were the price paid for 
them. 

M* 



126 THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN. 

that keen sense of simumess, unworthiness, 
insufficiency, for that distrust of self, and that 
reliance on one higher and mightier than 
ourselves, which has enabled all God's saints 
to do and to suffer things beyond their na- 
tural power, making good the saying of St 
Paul, i When I am weak, then am I strong.' 



127 



LECTURE IV. 

THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 

By their fruits ye shall know them.' 

We have considered Islam hitherto in itself; 
the nature of its origin, and the character of 
its Founder; its Sacred Book, and the teaching 
theological and moral therein contained. But 
the "best test, after all, of the truth and worth 
of a religion must be the practical one. 
What has it effected ? Is mankind the better 
for it or the worse? What are its fruits? 
Men do not gather figs from thorns, neither 
from a bramble bush gather they grapes. 
Caution, however, must be observed in the 
application of this test. It is not always easy 
to trace how far the prosperity or the depres- 
sion of any given country is owing to the 



128 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

religion which prevails there or to other 
causes: race, climate, foreign invasion, and 
the like. Nor is it the primary object of 
religion to secure man's happiness in this 
world, but to guide him in his aspirations to 
the world above. But it seems safe to take 
our stand upon this principle, which may be 
called the law of concomitant variations: that 
if prosperity has followed the establishment 
of a certain form of religion, increasing where 
it is strong, and decreasing where it is weak, 
and this in a multitude of instances, — that is 
to say, in divers countries, and in divers ages 
of the world, — there must be something in 
that religion which is conducive to prosperity; 
and, in like manner, that if the reverse follows, 
there must be something in that religion ad- 
verse to prosperity, and consequently that 
such religion cannot as a whole be divine. 
1 The light which leads astray is not the light 
from Heaven/ 

Let us, then, briefly survey what has taken 
place in those countries where Islam has been 
planted. First of all, it must be freely 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. I 29 

granted that to his own people Mahomet 
was a great benefactor. He was born in a 
country where political organization, and 
rational faith, and pure morals were un- 
known. He introduced all three. By a 
single stroke of masterly genius, he simul- 
taneously reformed the political condition, 
the religious creed, and the moral practice 
of his countrymen ; in the place of many 
independent tribes he left a nation ; for a 
superstitious belief in Gods many and Lords 
many he established a reasonable belief in 
one Almighty yet beneficent Being ; taught 
men to live under an abiding sense of this 
Being's superintending care, to look to Him 
as the re warder, and to fear Him as the 
punisher, of evil doers. He vigorously at- 
tacked, and modified or suppressed, many 
gross and revolting customs which had pre- 
vailed in Arabia down to this time. For an 
abandoned profligacy was substituted a care- 
fully regulated polygamy, and the practice 
of destroying female infants was effectually 
abolished. 



I30 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

As Islam gradually extended its conquest 
beyond the boundaries of Arabia, many bar- 
barous races whom it absorbed became in 
like manner participators in its benefits. The 
Turk, the Indian, the Negro, and the Moor, 
were compelled to cast away their idols, to 
abandon their licentious rites and customs, 
to turn to the worship of one God, to a de- 
cent ceremonial and an orderly way of life. 
The faith even of the more enlightened 
Persian was purified ; he learned that good 
and evil are not co-ordinate powers, but that 
just and unjust are alike under the sway of 
one All-wise and Holy Ruler, who 'ordereth 
all things in heaven and earth/ 

For barbarous nations, then, especially, — 
nations which were more or less in the con- 
dition of Arabia itself at the time of Ma- 
homet — nations in the condition of Africa at 
the present day, with little or no civilization, 
and without a reasonable religion — Islam 
certainly comes as a blessing, as a turning 
from darkness to light, and from the power 
of Satan unto God. But the imposition of a 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 131 

system good for barbarians upon people 
already possessing higher forms of civiliza- 
tion, and the principles of a purer faith, is not 
a blessing, but a curse. Nay more, even the 
system which was good for people when they 
were in a barbarous state may become posi- 
tively mischievous to those same people 
w r hen they begin to emerge from their bar- 
barism under its influence into a higher con- 
dition. The danger, as w r as remarked at the 
beginning of the last lecture, attaching to a 
► system which minutely regulates every de- 
partment of social life, moral conduct, and 
religious ceremonial, is that it should be held 
rigorously in force upon men when they have 
outgrown the need of it. It may be good 
as far as it goes ; good relatively to certain 
circumstances, and perhaps, for the circum- 
stances under which it was first devised, the 
best possible ; but if it be not absolutely and 
perfectly good, good for all times, places, and 
persons, it must at some time, in certain places, 
and to certain persons become not a help, but 
a hindrance, to civilization and moral progress. 



132 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

The immediate effect, then, of the intro- 
duction of Islam among barbarous races, is 
to raise them considerably in the scale of 
humanity. Its action in this respect is pro- 
bably more speedy than the action of Chris- 
tianity, owing to that definiteness, positive- 
ness, minuteness, with which it is brought to 
bear on practical life, of which we have al- 
ready spoken; it lays down rules and enforces 
conformity to them, and consequently a more 
immediate return is yielded in a visible refor- 
mation of manners, than is possible in the 
case of a religion which inculcates large 
principles for the due application of which 
much must be left to the individual con- 
science. 

But when we turn to consider the effects 
of the introduction of Islam among nations 
already acquainted with the civilization of the 
Roman Empire and the light of the Christian 
religion, the picture is very different. We 
are compelled by the facts of history to 
decline believing that in these cases Islam, 
viewed as a whole, has been anything but an 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 33 

enormous evil. Claiming, as it did, to be the 
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
truth, it tolerated no rival ; Christianity and 
Christian civilization were voluntarily or by 
compulsion to bend the knee before it. The 
most effectual plan was to make a clean 
sweep of both. Let us see how far the first 
Mohammedan conquerors acted upon it. I 
will quote the words of that most eminent 
and trustworthy historian of the Byzantine 
Empire, Mr. Finlay. 'The Arab conquest/ 
he says, ' of Palestine and Syria, not only put 
an end to the political power of the Romans, 
which had lasted seven hundred years, but it 
also rooted out every trace of the Greek 
civilization introduced by the conquests of 
Alexander the Great which had flourished in 
the country for upwards of nine centuries.' 1 
The celebrated reply of the Caliph Omar, 
when asked what should be done with the 
library of Alexandria, illustrates the policy of 
the wSaracens in Egypt as elsewhere. Tf/ 
said he, ' these writings agree with the Book 

1 Vol. i. p. 445, 2d edition. 



134 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

of God, they are useless and need not be 
preserved ; if they disagree, they are perni- 
cious, and ought to be destroyed;' and ac- 
cordingly the library was burned. Here, 
again, Mr. Finlay remarks, ' political sagacity 
convinced the Arabs that it was necessary J:o 
exterminate Greek civilization in order to 
destroy Greek influence. The Goths, who 
sought only to plunder the empire, might 
spare the libraries of the Greeks ; but the 
Mohammedans, whose object was to convert 
or subdue, considered it a duty to root out 
everything that presented any obstacle to the 
ultimate success of their schemes for the ad- 
vent of Mohammedan civilization/ Tracing 
their career of conquest along the northern 
coast of Africa, he concludes by observing : 
' The Saracens were singularly successful in 
all their projects of destruction ; in a short 
time, both Latin and Greek civilization was 
exterminated on the southern shores of the 
Mediterranean/ 1 

1 Vol. i. pp. 450, 451, 2nd edition. 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 35 

In Spain, after the establishment of the 
Caliphate of Cordova in 936 a.d., order suc- 
ceeded a state of anarchy, which had been 
disastrous alike to the conquerors and to the 
conquered, and under a happy succession of 
vigorous, and in many instances, upright and 
enlightened Caliphs, commerce and agricul- 
ture, science, literature, and the arts, were 
carried to a higher degree of perfection than 
in any other country under Arabian rule. I 
am not just yet going to discuss the question, 
how far Arabic science and art were original, 
how far borrowed from the lower Greek 
Empire. What I wish to point out at 
present, is, that although in Spain a high 
order, as it seemed, of prosperity grew up, 
yet it was only partial, it did not extend to 
the whole of the population ; the subject 
Christians were never conciliated, or assimi- 
lated; they were not happy or content; and 
their resistance to the Moors, as they were 
called, never ceased, from the day the first 
Moor set foot in the land until the day the 
last was expelled from it. 



I36 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

From this rapid survey of the early con- 
quests of the Saracens, two facts seem 
abundantly plain : first, that the claim of 
Islam to supersede every other form of faith 
and of civilisation was so absolute, that it could 
not tolerate their presence side by side with 
itself; and that, as a consequence, it never 
could get a permanent hold upon any country 
which had become thoroughly leavened with 
the Christianity, the civilisation, and the law 
of the Roman Empire. It is a very inexact 
way of speaking to say that it ' crumpled up 
the empire ;' x it would be more correct to 
say that it grated on the edges. Countries 
like Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and northern 
Africa, on the fringe of the empire, countries 
whose inhabitants were regarded as rebels by 
the Emperor, and as heretics by the Greek 
Church, fell before Islam, but on the heart of 
the empire it made no impression. Once it 
menaced Constantinople, but it was hurled 
back by the might and valour of Leo the 
Isaurian. The second fact is this; that in 

1 Bosworth Smith, Lect. i. p. 26, 2nd edition. 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 37 

those countries on the skirts of the empire 
where it did succeed in planting itself, this 
was accomplished at the cost of uprooting as 
far as possible the religion and civilisation 
which it found there. To quote again from 
Mr. Finlay: 'Of all the native populations in 
the countries subdued, the Arabs of Syria 
alone appear to have immediately adopted 
the new religion of their co-national race; 
but the great mass of the Christians in Syria, 
Mesopotamia, Egypt, Cyrenai'ca, and Africa, 
clung firmly to their faith, and the decline of 
Christianity in all those countries is to be at- 
tributed rather to the extermination than to 
the conversion of the Christian inhabitants. 
The decrease in the number of the Christians 
was invariably attended by a decrease in the 
number of the inhabitants, and arose from 
the oppressive treatment which they suffered 
under the Mohammedan rulers of these 
countries — a system of tyranny which was at 
last carried so far as to reduce whole pro- 
vinces to unpeopled deserts.* 1 

'Vol. i. p. 452. 



I38 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

Looking now beyond the limits of the 
Roman Empire, the country where we might 
most reasonably expect Mohammedanism to 
have accomplished great things is Persia. 
There Islam had a fair field to work upon ; 
it became the national religion ; there were 
no infidel Europeans to resist and hinder its 
free development. But, as if by a strange 
perverseness, Islam never seems to flourish 
so well as when it is attacked or attacking. 
Left to itself unmolested it loses energy, or 
wastes its strength upon internal strife. In 
Persia it split into a multitude of contending 
sects, more occupied in devouring one another 
than in promoting the welfare of their com- 
mon country. The Persian is probably the 
most polished, well educated, and literary, of 
all Mohammedans; yet his country is the 
most deplorable specimen of mismanagement, 
political, commercial, and everything else. 
Fertile as the country is, and scanty as is the 
population, there is none which has suffered 
more cruelly from famine; and, as a last 
resource, the helpless government was re- 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 39 

duced to the ignominious necessity, a short 
time back, of calling in the aid of a foreigner, 
a European, to save the country from be- 
coming a total wreck. 

Incomparably the most favourable ex- 
ample of Mohammedan rule is to be found 
in the Empire of the Great Moguls. The 
greatest man of that illustrious dynasty as far 
surpasses the best Caliphs of Cordova, as 
they excel the Shahs of Persia. The wise 
and noble Akbar, the third Mogul Emperor, 
presents to us the extraordinary spectacle of 
an Oriental despot, who during a long reign 
of nearly half a century was unblemished by 
a single crime worthy of record. In warfare 
he was humane, forbidding the sale of cap- 
tives as slaves, dispensing when possible with 
the punishment of death, and forbidding it to 
be inflicted with unnecessary pain, or pro- 
longed torture. In legislation he was liberal; 
he abolished the capitation tax hitherto im- 
posed upon the Hindoos, he admitted men 
of all creeds to the highest offices of state. 
But, unfortunately, it cannot be maintained 



I40 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

that this splendid example of an enlightened 
Moslem ruler was himself a veritable Mussul- 
man. He was in fact an eclectic, and, beyond 
the doctrine of the unity of God, he paid but 
little attention to the teaching, theological or 
practical, of the Koran. He treated Chris- 
tianity with marked respect, and even per- 
mitted one of his sons to be instructed in the 
Gospel. The Moslem, too ; was free to drink 
wine, to eat pork, to play at dice, and to with- 
draw, if he pleased, from the Mosque. In 
short, Akbar was so sorry a Mussulman that 
he incurred the displeasure of his Moslem 
subjects, not, we may suppose, so much from 
the indulgences which he allowed to them, as 
for the lenity and impartial justice which he 
observed towards all other creeds. None of 
his successors were equally tolerant, and in 
Aurungzebe Moslem bigotry again mounted 
the throne. The mild and equitable rule of 
Akbar is emphatically the case of an exception 
which proves the rule. Still it is to be freely 
granted that the lot of the Hindoos under 
Mussulman rule in India has never been so 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 141 

unhappy as the lot of the subject Christians 
in other countries. While this has been 
partly due to the character of the rulers, 
much, no doubt, has been owing also to the 
character of the ruled. The Hindoo was na- 
turally more passive and submissive than the 
native of western countries, and the mild tole- 
rance of his religious creed inspired him with 
no earnest zeal either to propagate his own 
faith, or to resist the faith of his conquerors. 
But if there have been a few Moslem 
dynasties which present some passing gleams, 
more or less bright, more or less prolonged, 
of civilisation and righteous government, 
there is one which, from the beginning of 
its career to the present day, has acted the 
part of the destroyer and the oppressor with 
the most fearful and unrelenting consistency. 
No country under Moslem rule is permanently 
prosperous, but the Ottoman Turk has suc- 
ceeded beyond all others who have professed 
the faith of Islam in making the countries 
subject to his rule permanently miserable. 
The land may be ' as the Garden of Eden 



142 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

before him, but behind him it is a desolate 
•wilderness/ There is no country, perhaps, 
which Providence has blessed with a more 
bountiful store of natural resources than Asia 
Minor, especially on the sea coast ; its rivers 
ran with gold, its mountains yielded copper 
and iron, and costly marble ; its plains waved 
with all manner of crops, and the sides of its 
hills were clad with the vine and the olive. 
In the days of Greek and Roman enterprise 
the coast was thickly studded with populous 
and opulent cities. Under the care of an 
industrious people, it once was, and might be 
again, a paradise of beauty, and a treasure 
house of wealth. But now the traveller wan- 
ders through a dreary region rich only in ruins, 
the melancholy relics of departed splendour, 
and inhabited only by roving bands of Turco- 
mans, and their herds of goats. Travellers 
also in Palestine tell us that the sacred soil 
would be prodigal in its gifts ; that it might 
be again ' a land of wheat, and barley, and 
vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land 
of oil olive and honey ; a land wherein men 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 43 

might eat bread without scarceness ; they 
should not lack anything in it ; a land whose 
stones are iron, and out of whose hills men 
might dig brass ;' * but the curse of Turkish 
Mohammedan occupation is upon it, and, 
save in the neighbourhood of Christian vil- 
lages, the once fruitful land has become bar- 
ren. The condition of European Turkey is 
too notorious, unhappily, at the present time 
to require any description or comment. The 
conclusion to which we are brought by this 
rapid survey is that sooner or later, in less 
degree or in greater, historians and travellers 
have the same tale to tell of all countries 
under Moslem rule — the tale of lost fertility 
of the soil, of a diminished and degraded 
population, of ruined towns, of poverty- 
stricken villages. 

Turning now from the effect of Moham- 
medanism upon the countries where it was 
introduced to its effect on human character, 
some analogy is, I think, discernible between 

1 See especially Captain Warren's ' Underground Jerusalem/ 
chap. xx. 



144 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

the two. The immediate effect is surprisingly 
great, and for the most part exceedingly 
admirable, but it does not last. The first 
successors of Mahomet himself were splendid 
examples of the character which his religion 
could produce. Abu Bakr and Omar, Oth- 
man and Ali, were patterns of temperance, 
justice, and honour, for parallels to whom we 
look in vain among the corrupt and effete 
rulers of the Roman Empire in their day. 
But this early and speedy promise is followed 
by a no less rapid deterioration and decay. 
In the course of a few generations the noble 
breed of men who founded the Empire of 
Islam, partly warriors, partly statesmen, 
partly even saints, has vanished away. The 
Christians in the Syrian province of the 
Roman Empire almost welcomed their Sara- 
cenic conquerors as affording them the pros- 
pect of a happier lot than that which they 
endured under the evil administration of a 
decadent power ; but in a few generations 
these hopes were frustrated: the conquerors 
became oppressors, and the province was 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 45 

transformed into a desert. In like manner 
the earlier Ottoman princes, although never 
approaching the Saracenic Caliphs in no- 
bility of character, were not destitute of 
many fine qualities, and Othman at least had 
some true notions about the duties and obli- 
gations of a sovereign to his people. ' Rule 
mercifully and justly/ were the last words he 
spoke to his son. But his successors quickly 
degenerated into merciless tyrants, and have 
finally dwindled into the abject and despica- 
ble creatures whom we have now beheld for 
generations, seated on the throne of Con- 
stantinople, and in whom it is often difficult 
to say whether wickedness or weakness is 
the more distinctive feature. 

With regard to the science, literature, and 
art of the Saracens, of which one hears and 
reads so much, I would not for a moment 
question their reality or underrate their 
value; but that they were in any sense direct 
products of Islam is, I think, very much to be 
doubted. Where did the Saracens get these 

things? Did they evolve them from their 

o 



I46 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

'own inner consciousness? They certainly 
did not bring them with them from Mecca 
and Medina. The fact is, that though they 
succeeded in destroying much of Greek and 
Roman literature and art, they could not 
destroy all. They could- not destroy every 
copy of Aristotle and Hippocrates ; they 
could not break down every Roman arch, 
nor did they demolish the mighty dome of 
St. Sophia at Constantinople. And there 
were men among the Arabs who were wise 
enough to study these Greek and Roman 
masterpieces of thought and art, and clever 
enough to turn their study to good practical 
account. They taught in Persia and in the 
Western part of the Roman Empire what 
they had learned in the Eastern part of it ; 
and reproduced, perhaps with improvements, 
in Cordova or Bagdad, what they had seen 
in Byzantium. Their range of study amongst 
Greek authors was limited, and confined to 
translations of books on physical and meta- 
physical science. The research of Gibbon 
failed to discover a record of any Arabic 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 47 

translation of any Greek poet, orator, or his- 
torian. We cannot rate very highly the lit- 
erary genius of a people who neglected the 
richest treasury of human thought in these de- 
partments which the world possesses. Their 
native literary productions may be of a very 
high order ; but it is difficult to believe that 
what is so very insignificant in translation, 
can be positively first rate in the original, at 
least in matter, though it may be in style. 
Of the value of Arabian contributions to as- 
tronomy, mathematics, and medicine, I am 
quite incompetent to decide. Astronomy, 
we may say, is indigenous in the East, where 
the climate favours and facilitates the study. 
The so-called Arabic numerals appear to be 
of Indian origin. 

If, then, it be true that the Mohammedans 
picked up their science and art, for the most 
part second-hand, from those fragments of 
both in the Roman Empire which escaped 
destruction from the early Mohammedan in- 
vaders, this question naturally occurs : — sup- 
posing Eastern and Western Christianity had 



I48 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

been left to pursue their course unmolested 
in Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor, Egypt, North- 
ern Africa, Spain, and Turkey, would not 
science, literature, the arts, and everything 
else which makes up civilisation, have flour- 
ished as well as they have done in those 
countries under Moslem rule, or do now in 
those whose are still under it? It is hard to 
believe that they would not have flourished, 
not only as well, but a great deal better. At 
any rate, they could not have flourished less 
than they do in most of those countries at 
the present moment. Mr. Palgrave bears 
strong testimony to the high intellectual and 
practical qualities of the Arabs ; he sees ca- 
pacities and aptitudes in the race for accom- 
plishing great things in science and art, but 
he adds : i When the Koran and Mecca shall 
have disappeared from Arabia, then, and 
then only, can we expect to see the Arab 
assume that place in the ranks of civilization 
from which Mahomet and his book have, 
more than any other cause, long held him 
back.' Here again, then, we see, as in the 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 49 

case of Persia, that Islam left to itself has 
somehow the unpleasant knack of consuming 
energy and retarding progress. 

And this brings me to the last point in 
connection with this part of our subject. As 
the greatest and noblest specimen of a so- 
called Mohammedan sovereign, Akbar, was 
not, strictly speaking, a Mohammedan at all, 
so we find that, in all Mohammedan states, 
many of the most eminent men in all depart- 
ments, politics, war, and literature, belonged, 
originally at least, to an alien race, and an 
alien creed, most commonly Christian or 
Jewish. 1 The most remarkable illustration 
of this fact, because it is one which lasted for 
several centuries, was the employment by the 
Ottoman Turks of the corps known by the 
name of the Janissaries. From the end of the 
fourteenth up to the middle of the seventeenth 
century, the great military conquests of the 
Turks were mainly due to this celebrated 

1 He who thinks it worth while to plod through the lists of 
learned men in the pages of Abdulpharagius may soon convince 
himself of this fact. 

O* 



150 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

body of soldiers. And who were the Janis- 
saries ? They were the offspring of Christians 
in the provinces which the Turk had already 
subdued — Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, and 
Roumania. They were a human tax levied 
by the conqueror on his victims ; the very 
flower of their strength. Torn at an early 
age from their homes, they were carefully 
trained up as Mussulmans, in ignorance of 
any home but the camp, and of any earthly 
power to whom allegiance was due, save the 
representative of the great prophet of Islam. 
'From the seminaries of the Janissaries/ says 
Von Hammer, 'issued the greatest men of 
the Ottoman Empire. As long as the yearly 
levy of Christian children continued, their 
most famous statesmen and generals were 
for the most part born Greeks, Albanians, and 
Bosnians; seldom native Turks/ 'And thus/ 
he proceeds in cogent and indignant language, 
' thus the strength of Turkish despotism re- 
paired itself in the heart-blood of Christen- 
dom ; and by means of this cunning engine 
of statecraft Greece was compelled to tear 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. I 5 I 

herself to pieces by the hands of her own 
children/ The words of Von Hammer are 
only a repetition of an observation made cen- 
turies before, in 1573, by a Venetian diplo- 
matist at the court of Selim II. ' It is in the 
highest degree remarkable/ he said, ' that the 
wealth, the administration, the force, in short 
the whole body politic of the Ottoman Empire 
rests upon, and is entrusted to, men born in 
the Christian faith, converted into slaves, 
and reared up as Mahometans/ The saying 
remains in a great measure true to the present 
day. Whatever vital energy there is in Tur- 
key, whatever agricultural industry, whatever 
commercial enterprise, appears to depend 
upon Jews or Christians ; in fact upon any 
people but the Turks ; and though the 
common Turk can fight with courageous 
obstinacy, the conduct of the fleet and army 
of that poor shadowy thing men call the 
Sublime Porte, appears to be entrusted in a 
great measure to foreigners. We do not say 
that the barbarism of the Turk is the product 
■ of Islam ; far from it. It is, no doubt, in a 



152 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

great measure inherent in the Tartar race ; 
but we do say that Mohammedanism has not 
cured it, or even improved it. As he was 
barbarian in the beginning, so is the Turk 
barbarian now, and so, as long as he remains 
Mohammedan, barbarian to all human ap- 
pearance he will continue to be. On the 
other hand, experience warrants the assertion 
that there is no race, barbarian or civilised, of 
which Christianity has taken z.firm hold} that 
has not advanced, and that does not manifest 
capacities of further progress to an indefinite 
extent. This is the real answer to those 
superficial remarks often made that the 
Russian or the Bulgarian is as barbarous as 
the Turk, that the Turk 'is a gentleman/ 
and so on. It is not indeed true, even now ; 
but if it were true, we might be quite sure 
that it would not remain true, because history 
and experience teach us, that while in Chris- 

1 I use these words advisedly because Abyssinia is an in- 
stance of a state which has long professed Christianity, and 
yet is barbarous; but Christianity in Abyssinia is so very im- 
perfect and impure that it can hardly be said to have more than 
touched it. 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 53 

tian states, there is an indefinite power of 
advance, Mohammedan states, after quickly 
reaching a certain point, become stationary, 
or else retrograde. In the most degraded, 
the most barbarian Christian state, there are 
untold germs, endless possibilities of growth. 
Is it thus with Mohammedan nations ? Let 
the past history or the present condition of 
Arabia, of Persia, of Syria, of Egypt, of 
Northern Africa, of Spain of Asia Minor, of 
Turkey in Europe supply the answer. It is 
easy to point to individual Mohammedans 
who have been better than individual Chris- 
tians, just as it is easy to point to special eras 
when some Mohammedan states have been 
more civilised than some Christian states. 
But this proves nothing. The question is, 
not whether Islam has produced here and 
there fine types of character, or splendid eras 
of civilisation, but whether, as a system, in the 
long run, it promotes a higher and ever in- 
creasing order of civilisation and virtue. 
Are Mohammedan countries, as a rule, pros- 
perous and progressive, or are they de- 



154 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

pressed, stationary, retrograde ? Take a prac- 
tical test. Would any one as willingly live in 
the London, the Paris, the Vienna, the St. 
Petersburg, of 200 years ago, as he would 
live in the London, the Paris, the Vienna, the 
St. Petersburg of the present day, notwith- 
standing all the abominations which yet 
remain there ? I trow not. This is because 
the countries of which those cities are the 
capitals have advanced in civilisation. Could 
we apply the same test with equal confidence 
to cities under Mohammedan rule, Smyrna, 
for instance ? In fact, from a review of the 
past history, and a survey of the present con- 
dition, of the principal countries in the world, 
there seems no escape from the conclusion 
that Christianity and real civilisation are 
practically co-extensive ; where the one ends, 
the other ends also. 

And if this be the case ; if, though with 
occasional gleams of sunshine, the presence 
of Mohammedanism acts like an east wind 
on prosperity and progress, the question yet 
remains why is this ? The explanation may 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 55 

be found in the fact that three of the worst 
elements of barbarism, three conditions the 
most fatal to human civilisation and moral 
improvement, are incorporated in Islam as 
integral parts of the system. The three evils 
to which I allude are polygamy, despotism, 
and its counterpart, slavery. They are in- 
digenous in the East ; Mahomet alleviated 
them indeed, but they are distinctly adopted 
in the Koran, and consequently are invested 
with a kind of divine sanction. They stamp 
upon the religion of Mahomet an essentially 
Oriental character. Christianity and the 
Western nations abhor and repudiate these 
three evil things, and consequently Moham- 
medanism has ever been the most implaca- 
ble foe to Christianity and the Western 
nations, the most impervious barrier to the 
advance of Christianity and Western civilisa- 
tion in an eastward direction. 

The establishment of a regulated poly- 
gamy by Mahomet was, of course, a great 
advance upon the unrestrained licentiousness 
which in Arabia had preceded it; but then 



I56 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

polygamy, although controlled, is established, 
with all its concomitant evils: degradation on 
the side of the woman who belongs to the 
husband, while the husband does not belong 
to her: jealousies on -both sides, an over- 
grown and divided household. Yet all who 
acknowledge the Koran must accept poly- 
gamy as a divinely sanctioned condition of 
life. Under the law of Moses, polygamy 
was tolerated ; under the law of Mahomet it 
is established. All honour to him for en- 
deavouring to mitigate its evils by restriction. 
The practice was so deeply rooted in Orien- 
tal life, that this was probably all which he 
could venture to attempt. The divine wis- 
dom of the Mosaic law is manifested in the 
fact that while it seems to do less for the evil, 
while it tolerates and places no defined limi- 
tations on the practice, it thereby left the 
way more clear for its ultimate abolition. 

To the votary of Islam, again, there is no 
escape from the recognition of absolute des- 
potism as a divinely ordered form of govern- 
ment. By virtue of his alleged commission 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. I 57 

from God, Mahomet claimed the right to 
regulate every item in the life of his disci- 
ples; and his successors are suffered to inherit 
his divine right of absolute power, only limited 
in their case by deference to the directions 
of the Koran. That sacred volume is the 
only groundwork of jurisprudence for nations 
professing the faith of Islam. It is for the 
Mussulman his code of civil law, as well as of 
theology and ethics. The ultimate appeal in 
every question of law in any Mohammedan 
nation, whether it be in the East or the West, 
whether it be in the ninth century or the 
nineteenth, is to some sentences inscribed on 
a palm leaf or mutton bone in Arabia in the 
middle of the seventh century. The rigidity 
of the Koran is often so incapable of adapta- 
tion to the necessities of particular cases that, 
in order to prevent a deadlock, an ingenious 
method of evasion is adopted. To quote the 
words of Gibbon : ' The Kadi respectfully 
places the sacred volume on his head, and 
substitutes a dexterous interpretation more 
apposite to the principles of equity, and to 



I58 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

the manners and policy of the times/ Should 
the employment of this subterfuge become 
more common, as in some Mohammedan 
countries seems probable, the way will be 
indefinitely opened to moral and social, if 
not religious reformation ; but then Islam 
will cease to be Islam. Where the religion 
of Mahomet is maintained in its integrity, the 
sciences of divinity and law coalesce ; the 
jurist and divine is the same person, only 
looked at from different points of view, and 
one name is common to him in both capacities. 
In like manner the functions of monarch and 
chief pontiff are united in the same person. 
Such is the impotence of the Ottoman Sultans 
at the present day, that the administration 
of government (if the word government can 
be so far dishonored as to be applied to 
what is, in fact, merely a system of rapine) 
must practically be conducted by other wills 
than theirs ; yet the Grand Vizier and the 
Mufti are in theory only the ministers, and 
obedient slaves of the Sultan's will in tem- 
poral and ecclesiastical affairs. And in 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 59 

the early days of Saracenic and Turkish 
power, the great Caliphs and Sultans ex- 
ercised a despotic power exceeding that of 
any Roman Emperor or Pope ; for the will 
even of the most despotic emperors or popes 
was subject to the control of some forms of 
constitutional law, and that law, again, was 
leavened more or less by the principles of 
the Gospel. Even the tyranny of the first 
Buonaparte was not that purely arbitrary 
will, that mere personal agency, which in its 
origin is essentially Oriental, and which 
is embodied in the religious system of Ma- 
homet. 

In describing the effects of the early Sa- 
racenic conquests, Mr. Finlay remarks: 'No 
attempt was made to arrange any systematic 
form of political government, and the whole 
power of the state was vested in the hands of 
the chief priest of the religion, who was only 
answerable for the due exercise of this ex- 
traordinary power to God, his own con- 
science, and the patience of his subjects. 
The moment, therefore, that the responsibility 



l6o THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

created by national feelings, military compa- 
nionship, and exalted enthusiasm ceased to 
operate on the minds of the Caliphs, the ad- 
ministration became far more oppressive than 
that of the Roman Empire. No local magis- 
trates elected by the people, and no parish 
priests connected by their feelings and in- 
terests both with their superiors and inferiors, 
bound society together by common ties; and 
no system of legal administration, indepen- 
dent of the military and financial authorities, 
preserved the property of the people from 
the rapacity of the government Socially 
and politically the Saracen Empire was little 
better than the Gothic, Hunnish, and Avar 
monarchies ; and that it proved more durable 
with almost equal oppression is to be attri- 
buted to the powerful enthusiasm of Ma- 
homet's religion which tempered for some 
time its avarice and tyranny/ We may add, 
that where the conscience of the sovereign 
and the patience of the people are the only 
bounds to the exercise of his power, con- • 
science is apt to become hardened, and 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM, l6l 

patience amazingly enduring. Inured to 
subjection, and deprived of any ready means 
of discussing their wrongs, or concerting 
resistance, the people are apt to lapse into 
apathetic indolence, and stupid resignation. 
It is unnecessary to add that where poly- 
gamy and depotism exist, there also slavery 
must be found. Slavery, in fact, pervades 
the whole social and political life of a people 
under Moslem rule. The wife is the slave 
of the husband rather than his partner ; the 
domestic servant is the slave of both. The 
Pasha is the slave of the despot ; he is a 
despot himself over the province which is in 
bondage to his rule. Slavery appears to be 
mild in Mohammedan countries, and so it is; 
not only because kind treatment of the slave 
is enjoined in the Koran, but also because 
where all are reduced more or less to the 
condition of slaves, servitude is no disgrace. 
Where all are equally subject to the absolute 
will of the monarch, the sharp distinctions of 
rank are removed. Servitude becomes no 
barrier to the elevation of a man to the high- 



1 62 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

est offices in the State. The favour of the 
despot indeed is more likely to be bestowed 
on a slave than on a man of noble origin ; 
the policy of the despot being to depress the 
aristocracy, who might by their position be- 
come leaders of rebellion, and to reduce all 
ranks as much as possible to one dead level 
of subjection. And, as a matter of fact, the 
men who have risen to the highest offices 
in Moslem States, especially at Constanti- 
nople, have been commonly men who began 
by discharging the most menial and often 
the basest and most disgraceful functions 
about the court of the sovereign. 

We repeat that we do not affirm these 
evils to be the direct products of Islam. 
They are indigenous in the East, and are 
deeply rooted in Oriental habits of life ; but 
we do say that they are the concomitants of 
Islam ; that where Islam is established they 
are established, and further that, though 
alleviated in degree, they are more closely 
riveted upon Mohammedan countries than 
any others, because they are there invested 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 1 63 

with a divine sanction. Islam has taken up 
into itself and consecrated these evil forms 
of Oriental life, and consequently it opposes 
the most solid obstacle to the reception in 
the East of Christian and Western civilisa- 
tion. Where, on the other hand, the Mus- 
sulman rules over a population which is 
Christian and European, he can never assimi- 
late them or be assimilated by them ; the Ko- 
ran forbids him to treat an infidel as his 
equal ; the alien invader can maintain his con- 
quest only by becoming an oppressor ; the 
two elements may live centuries side by side, 
but like oil and vinegar they will not fuse : 
the one is Mohammedan, Asiatic, stationary; 
the other Christian, European, progressive. 
As the character of the Great Head of 
the Christian Church, when He became in- 
carnate, was Catholic, so is the character of 
the Church which He founded. It is capa- 
ble of adaptation to human nature every- 
where, because it is not like an inanimate 
machine which, once made, can work only 
in one way, but is a living organism instinct 



164 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

with a divine life, even the spirit of its Head. 
It can move in a hundred different ways ac- 
cording to His direction, and accommodate 
itself to every race, and to every form of 
social or political condition ; it can live under 
a despotism or are public, amongst the rich 
and the poor, the Teuton, the Celt, the Afri- 
can, the Indian, the Melanesian. On the 
other hand as the character of the founder 
of Islam was essentially Oriental, so is the 
character of the religion which he founded ; 
it is acceptable to the Oriental nature, but 
repugnant to the Western; it has made rapid 
progress and obtained a firm footing among 
Eastern countries ; and, as it will not easily 
recede from its pretensions to the possession 
of absolute truth it is the most formidable 
rival which Christianity has to encounter in 
the East. 

And what tone, it may be asked, ought 
the Christian Church to assume towards its 
rival ? Certainly not that of denunciation or 
defiance, nor, on the other hand, of approba- 
tion and concession. In the face of the fact 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 165 

that Christians never have been able to live 
peaceably and happily under Moslem rule, 
although at the present day Mussulmans 
live in great peace and prosperity under 
Christian rule, it is, we think, rather hard 
that Christians should be reproached as in- 
clined to an attitude of harsh hostility or 
contempt towards the Moslem faith. 1 By all 
means let us recognize to the fujl what was 
great and noble in Mahomet himself, *and in 
the work which he accomplished; let us 
recognize to the full all the good which the 
religion of Mahomet has done, as well as all 
the evil, all its truth as well as all its error ; 
let us hold out the right hand of fellowship 
to the Mussulman as a brother, though an 
erring brother, whom we are bound to honour, 
to respect, and even to love. But, on the 
other hand, do not let us disguise or gloss 
over the fact that there is error, and most 
mischievous error in his religion ; do not let 
us talk of it as if it were almost as good as 

1 Bos. Smith, Lect. iv. p. 259, 279, and Preface to second edi- 
tion, p. 9. 



1 66 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

Christianity, or because Mahomet had a sort 
of reverence for Christ, go to the ridiculous 
length of calling Islam ' a form of Christian- 
ity ;' * although it expressly denies the very 
essence of Christianity, the Divinity and 
Incarnation of our blessed Lord. Do not 
let us make apologies for praying that the 
Mussulman may be brought to the know- 
ledge of a nobler and purer faith than his 
own as if it was an insult. 2 To cultivate 
friendship and good-will with men of a dif- 
ferent creed it cannot be necessary, because 
it cannot be right, to surrender one jot or 
tittle of the essential principles of our own 
faith; conscientious unbelievers would de- 
spise us if we did. What is needed is the 
exercise of that large-hearted charity which 
seeks their good in every possible way ; en- 
deavors to win them to the truth ; acts with 
them where it can, and, where it cannot, stands 
respectfully and courteously aside. It was 
a common saying of one of the most uncom- 

1 Bos. Smith, Lect. iv. p. 260. 2 Ibid. p. 259. 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. l6j 

promising Churchmen, the late Dean Hook, 
to Dissenters with whom he was brought 
much in contact and always lived on the 
most friendly terms: ' There is a line between 
us, but across that line we shake hands/ 
The saying would equally illustrate the 
proper attitude of Christians towards the 
Mussulman, or any other kind of unbeliever. 
There is a line between us ; if we can per- 
suade them to cross the line and to be one 
with us, we will receive them with open arms; 
if they will not cross it, let us shake hands 
over the line, and work hand in hand when- 
ever they will move in a parallel direction 
with us. But do not let us pretend that there 
is no line, that Christianity is only a few 
shades better than Mohammedanism, the Bi- 
ble only 'as a whole' better than the Koran, 
and that the difference between the two reli- 
gions is one not of kind, but only of degree. 1 
In short, in our laudable anxiety to make our 
Christianity pleasant and attractive to men 

1 Bos. Smith, Lect. i., p. 64, 67. 



1 68 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF 

of another creed, let us take heed not to dilute 
Christian doctrine so far as to find some day 
that we have lost what was of vital value for 
ourselves, and only bestowed on others a 
residuum which was hardly worth their 
acceptance. 



An Important Historical Series. 

Epochs of Modern History. 

EDITED BY 

EDWARD E. MORRIS, M.A., and J. SURTEES PHILLPOTTS, B.C.L 



Each 1 vol, 16mo. with Outline Maps. Price per volume, in cloth, $1.00. 

HISTORIES of countries are rapidly becoming so numerous that it is almost impossible 
for the most industrious student to keep pace "with them. Such vrorks are, of course, 
still less likely to be mastered by those of limited leisure. It is to meet the wants of this 
very numerous class of readers that the Epochs of History has been projected. The series 
will comprise a number of compact, handsomely printed manuals, prepared by thoroughly 
competent hands, each volume complete in itself, and sketching succinctly the most impor- 
tant epochs in the world's history, always making the history of a nation subordinate to this 
more general idea. No attempt will be made to recount all the events ot any given period. 
The aim will be to bring out in the clearest light the salient incidents and features of each 
epoch. Special attention will be paid to the literature, manners, state of knowledge, and all 
those characteristics which exhibit the life of a people as well as the policy of their rulers 
during any period. To make the text more readily intelligible, outline maps will be given 
with each volume, and where this arrangement is desirable they will be distributed through- 
out the text so as to be more easy of reference. A series of works based upon this general 
plan can not fail to be widely useful in popularizing history as science has been popularized. 
Those who have been discouraged from attempting more ambitious works because of their 
magnitude, will naturally turn to these Epochs of History to get a general knowledge of 
any period ; students may use them to great advantage in refreshing their memories and in 
keeping the true perspective of events, and in schools they will be of immense service as text 
books, — a point which shall be kept constantly in view in their preparation. 

THE FOLL O WING VOL UM£S ARE NO W READ Y: 

THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. By F. Seebohm, Author 
of "The Oxford Reformers— Col et, Erasmus, More." with an appendix by Prof. 
Geo. P. Fisher, of Yale College. Author of " HISTORY OF THE REF- 
ORMATION." 

THE CRUSADES. By Rev. G. W. Cox, M.A., Author of the "History of 
Greece." 

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR, 1618-1648. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner. 
THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK; with the CONQUEST and 
LOSS of FRANCE. By James Gairdner of the Public Record Office. 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND FIRST EMPIRE: an Historical Sketch; 

By William O'Connor Morris, with an appendix by Hon. Andrew D. 

White, President of Cornell University. 
THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. By Rev. M. Creighton, M.A. 

THE FALL OF THE STUARTS AND WESTERN EUROPE FROM 

1678 to 1697. By Rev. E. Hale, M.A. 
THE PURITAN REVOLUTION 1603-1660. By S R. Gardiner. 
THE EARLY PLANTAGENETS. By Rev. Wm. Stubbs. 

J9®=" Copies sent post-paid, on receipt of price, by the Publishers, 

SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., 747 ^ 745 Broadway, New York- 



Popular and Standard Books 

PUBLISHED BY 

Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 

743 and 745 t^roadMray , JSTeW iror'Pc, 

In 1876. 

■ ♦♦-» «■ 

BEY AWT and GAY'S Popular History of the United States. Volume I. Profusely 

Illustrated. (Sold only by subscription). 8vo, extra cloth $6 oo 

Blackie's (Prof, John Stuart) Songs of Religion and Life. Sq. i2mo i 50 

Bible Commentary. VoL VI. Ezekiel, Daniel and the Minor Prophets. 8vo 5 00 

Brooks' (Noah) The Boy Emigrants. Illustrated, i2mo , . . 1 50' 

Bushnell. [Uniform Edition of the select works of Horace Bushnell, D.D.) Christian 
Nurture. i2mo. Sermons for the New Life. i2mo. Christ and His Salvation. 

i2mo. Each 1 50 

Cahun's (Leon) Adventures of Captain Mago. Profusely Illustrated. Cr. 8vo... . 2 50 

Dodge's (Mrs. M. M.) Theophilus and Others. i2mo 1 50 

Dwight's (Dr. B. W.) Modern Philology. Cheap Edition, 2 vols. cr. 8vo 4 00 

EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY. Edited by E. E. Morris, M.A., and others. 
Creighton's Age of Elizabeth. With five maps. Hale's Fall of the Stuarts. 
With two maps. Gardiner's Puritan Revolution. With four maps. Stubb's 

Early Plantagenets. With two maps. Each 1 vol. sq. i2mo, cloth 1.00 

EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY. Edited by G. W. Cox, M.A., and others. 
Cox's Greeks and Persians. With four maps. Capes' Early Roman Empire. 
With t7oo maps. Cox's Athenian Empire from the Flight of Xerxes to the 

Fall of Athens. With five maps. Each 1 vol. sq. i2mo, cloth 1.00 

Field's (Dr. Henry M.) From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn, nmo 2 00 

Gilbert's ( W. S.) Original Plays. i2mo 1 75 

Holland's (Dr. J. G.) Every Day Topics: A Book of Briefs. i2ino .... 1 75 

The Mistress of the Manse. Illustrated edition. Small 4to 5 00 

Hale's (Rev. Edward Everett) Philip Nolan's Friends. Illustrated. i2mo 1 75 

Jerningham Journals (The). Two vols, in one. i2tno 125 

— - (Author of) Miss Hitchcock's Wedding Dress. i2mo 1 25 

LANGE'S COMMENTARY Dr. Philip Schaff, General Editor. Exodus and 

Leviticus. Ezekiel and Daniel. Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. 

Each one vol. 8"0 . , 5 00 

Memoir of Norman Macleod, D.D., by his brother, Rev. Donald Macleod, M.A. Illus- 
trated. 2 vols. 8 vo , 4 50 

Plato's Best Thoughts, as compiled from Prof. Jowett's Translation. 8vo 2 50 

Parker's (Dr. Joseph). The Paraclete. New and cheaper edition. 121110 150 

SANS-SOUCI SERIES (THE). Edited by Richard Henry Stoddard. Haydon's 
(B. R.) Life, Letters and Table Talk. Illustrated. Men and Manners in America 
One Hundred Years Ago. Illustrated. An Anecdote Biography of Percy B. 

Shelley. Illustrated. Each 1 vol. sq. i2mo 1 50 

Schuyler's (Eugene) Turkistan. With three maps and nwnerous illustrations. 

2 vols 8vo 5 00 

Stanley's (Dean) Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church. Third Series. 8vo. 4 00 

Ueberweg's History of Philosophy. New and cheaper edition. 2 vols. 8vo 5 00 

Van Oosterzee's Christian Dogmatics. New and cheaper edition. 2 vols. 8vo 500 

7 erne's (Jules) Mysterious Island. Three vols, in one. Illustrated. 3 00 

Michael StrogofF. Illustrated. Cr. 8vo 300 

Any or all of the above sent, post or express charges paid 9 on receipt of 
the price by the publishers. 



A BOOK WORTH READING. 

BLACKIE'S 
FOUR PHASES OF MORALS: 

SOCRATES, ARISTOTLE, CHRISTIANITY, AND 
UTILITARIANISM. 

BY 

JOHN STUART BLACKIE, F. R. S. E. 

PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, 

One volume > i2mo, $1.50. 



Selecting Socrates, Aristotle, Christianity, and Utilitarianism as the 
four great types, Prof. Blackie shows how the theories of the ancient schools 
intersect the activities of every-day life, and where they fall short of meeting 
the demands and necessities of the human soul. The volume is remarkably 
clear and incisive in style, and vigorous and stimulating in thought. 



CRITICAL NOTICES. 

From the Boston Daily A dvertiser. 

The Professor succeeds in bringing out with great perspicacity the salient 
and distinguishing features of the four most remarkable phases or schools of 
moral science which have had and still have influence in determining the 
speculative opinions and practical conduct of the present civilized peoples. 
The style of these lectures is for the most part plain and always directed to 
the thought. 

From the Boston Watchman and Reflector. 

We regard this book of Prof. Blackie' s as containing by far the ablest vin- 
dication of the divinity of Christianity which the year has produced. In the 
wide sweep of its thought it takes in all those principles which underlie the 
various forms not only of ancient error but of modern unbelief. The spirit 
of finest scholarship, of broadest charity, and of a reverent faith, pervades 
the entire book. 

From the New York Christian A dvocate. 

The author is eminently orthodox, both philosophically and theologically. 
.... It is a thoughtful work, and must prove highly suggestive of thougnt 
to all who may read it appreciatively. 

From the New York Examiner and Chronicle. 
His style is very readable, often beautiful, — at once adorning and illus- 
trating his themes by varied allusions to the best ancient and modern lit- 
erature. 

From the New York Evangelist. 
The volume shows a large acquaintance with the subject, and is uniformly 
dear and often eloquent. 

Sent post-paid upon receipt of price by 

SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG, & CO. 

743 & 745 Broadway, New York. 



'A GREAT SUCCESS,"— Pall Mall Gazette. 



A. 2sTE"V7* A.2Sr:D C IH! IE .A. ~P E IR, 2SDITI01T. 

MR. EUGENE SCHUYLER'S 

TURKI STAN: 

Notes of a Journey in 1873, in the Russian Province of 

Turkistan, the Khanates of Khokan and Bukhara, 

and Provinces of Kuldja. 

By EUGENE SCHUYLER, Ph.D., 

Formerly Secretary of the American Legation at St. Petersburg, now Consul- General 

at Constantinople. -" 

[OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 

From the London Times. 

" Mr. Schuyler will be ranked among the most accomplished of living travelers. 
Many parts of his book will be found of interest, even by the most exacting of general 
readers; and, as a whole, it is incomparably the most valuable record of Central Asia 
which has been published in this country." 

From the N. Y. Evening Post. 

"The author's chief aim appears to have been to do all that he says he tried to do, 
and to do greatly more beside — namely, to study everything there was to study in the 
countries which he visited, and to tell the world all about it in a most interesting way. 
He is, indeed, a model traveler, and he has written a model book of travels, in which 
every line is interesting, and from which nothing that any reader can want to hear abuut 
has been excluded." 

Mr. Gladstone in the "Contemporary Review?'* 

"One of the most solid and painstaking works which have been published among us 
in recent years." 

From the New York Times. 

"Its descriptions of the country and of the people living in it are always interesting 
and frequently amusing ; but it is easy to see that they have been written by one who is 
not only so thoroughly cosmopolitan as to know intuitively what is worth telling and what 
had better be omitted, but who is, also, so practiced a writer as to understand precisely 
how to set forth what he has to say in the most effective manner." 

Fro7n the Atlantic Monthly. '■ 
"Undoubtedly the most thoroughly brilliant and entertaining work on Turkistan 
which has yet been given to the English-speaking world." 

From the Independent. 
"It is fortunate that a record of the sort appears at this time, and doubly fortunate 
that it comes from the hand of so wise, well-informed, and industrious a traveler and 
diplomat." 

Fro7n the New York World. 
" Its author has the eye and pen of a journalist, and sees at once what is worth 
seeing, and recites his impressions in the most graphic manner." 

Two vols. 8vo. With three Maps, and numerous Illustrations, 
attractively bound in cloth, price reduced from $7.50 to $5. 

*%* The above book for sale by all booksellers^ or will be sent t express charges 
paid, upon receipt of advertised price by the publishers, 

SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., 

743 & 745 Broadway, New York. 




■■'-.■''■■■ 




Hi B 

ShBEBB 

HI 
ilfiiliiS 

BhH 

9Rffi« 
I MB 




i^BB 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



a> 



022 011 783 2 



